#NaNoWriMo 2014

by tag Posted on October 18, 2014

So. Once again, November and NaNoWriMo doth approach.

I had this all planned back in August. Since the Bunnies were overwhelmed by Sekirei, and I didn’t end up writing even 2K words of Selkie Maiden for Camp NaNoWriMo in July, I’d just have to write it in November. Great plan, everyone’s happy, right?

Just one problem. The Bunnies decided they were having none of it. I’ve been informed that Selkie Maiden is A) too much of a romance for the Bunnies to deal with right now (don’t ask me why, I haven’t a clue, especially when Sekirei plays with romance); and B) they don’t want to let go of Sekirei yet.

“But,” says the poor author, “November NaNoWriMo is reserved for original fics!”

Bunnies do hand-wave. “We’ll make it an alternate universe and just file the serial numbers off.”

Okay, valid way of doing things, I guess. So… it appears that I will likely be writing a Sekirei fic for November, probably the one in my notes currently titled Here Be Dragons. (It is SF, however…. Well, the OrigFic idea is SF. The fanfic that it seems I’ll be writing in November is fantasy….)

Anyway, that’s where things currently stand with NaNoWriMo 2014. Hope to have more for you soon!

‘Later! 🙂
tag0

Posted in Creativity, Fic, NaNoWriMo, Plot Bunnies!, Sekirei, Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Sekirei Fic: A Brother’s Concern

by tag Posted on August 8, 2014

So… this isn’t The Fanfic That Ate My Brain. That’s still a work in progress, and thanks to my new beta reader, what’s already written is also getting a serious overhaul. (Which is good, because it’s making the story better.) Nor is this one of the other two stories I started in July. No, this is the fourth Sekirei story I’ve started. It’s also the first one finished, because this is actually short.

Also cross-posting this to my accounts on FFNet and AO3.

Summary: The day after Homura’s winging, Mutsu receives some good news.

Click to read A Brother’s Concern

Posted in Fic, Sekirei, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

#CampNaNoWriMo July 2014: The Fanfic That Ate My Brain

by tag Posted on July 26, 2014

Well, it’s been a while. Haven’t meant to be absent from this blog for so long (again), but between the heat that has been hitting St. John’s (see all my previous complaints and rants about my allergy to heat) and getting caught up in the subject of this post, I’ve been more than a little bit distracted.

First of all, don’t know if I mentioned it or not, but I didn’t win April’s Camp NaNoWriMo. *shrugs* Again, various things happened, and Real Life interfered. Didn’t help that we were dealing with my housemates leaving, and two new housemates coming in (whom I admit I get along better with!). But, I did get some writing on It Came From the Library done, and I was determined to do better with this month’s Camp.

The story I chose to work on for this month was an original fic (naturally) called alternatively Seal Song or Selkie Maiden, based on the song “The Maiden and the Selkie” by Heather Dale. I’d already written the prologue, but figured it was easy enough to just remove that from the word count; and I knew how I wanted the first chapter to start out.

Well, I got off to a slow start – didn’t even start writing until July 7th, and ended up not writing anything July 9th and 10th due to horrendous headache attacking me out of nowhere the evening of July 8th.

Meanwhile, Vathara has been working on a Sekirei fanfic, and she was tossing lots of bio stuff and ideas with me, and while I was sick with the headache, she suggested that I read the manga. Heh. I’d already been intrigued by her descriptions of the character Kagari/Homura, especially the gender issues he experiences over the course of the series, and the manga just increased my fascination with him. So, the night of Friday July 11th, what should I end up doing but starting a Sekirei fic?

As the title of this post implies, that fic – titled “Fire and Flight” – rapidly began eating my brain. By (Thursday) July 17th, I’d already managed to write over 25,000 words, and brought my word count goal for the Camp back up to 50K words. And this past Wednesday (the 23rd) I reached 50,455 words just before midnight.

So, for the first time since I started doing the Camp, I am a Camp NaNoWriMo winner! Yay me! 🙂

If you want to read a few more details about Sekirei and FaF, read on!

Posted in Accomplishments, Camp NNWM, Creativity, Fic, NaNoWriMo, Plot Bunnies!, Sekirei, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Salmonier Nature Park

by tag Posted on June 5, 2014

Yes, I’m posting! Yay! 😉

I don’t know whether I mentioned this or not – I might have only mentioned it on the tagAught blog – but I’m currently in a program run by Eastern Health (the section of the Newfoundland health system that covers the eastern part of the island) where I live in a house with housemates for about a year or so, learning the life skills that I lack (for which we have a life skills instructor), and then move on to an apartment. It’s a carefully regulated program, and it’s already started making a difference for me. (The only thing is that I go back to my parents’ on the weekend, because otherwise Imber and I would miss each other two much – no pets are allowed in the house, because of potential allergies and potential issues with cleanup.)

Anyway, our current life skills instructor made the suggestion that we might want to take the occasional outing as a house (AKA her and our housemates), just to have some interesting things happen and bond as housemates. So a rec budget is being set up, but in the meantime, since our current life skills instructor is leaving at the end of this week, she suggested we go somewhere free. So yesterday, we took off to Salmonier Nature Park, which is an educational centre and a wildlife rehabilitation park. They take in wild animals who are injured, most of whom are native to Newfoundland and Labrador (I say “most” because moose are not actually native here; they were imported by a British governor in 1912 who was looking for a hunting challenge), and help them. If they’re able to be fully healed, they are then released back into the wild where they are found; if they’re too damaged to survive in the wild, but still able to live they’re placed in the park; and if they’re way too damaged, they’re put down.

Salmonier Nature Park is about an hour’s drive from St. John’s, with no gravel roads (except the short driveway/entrance to the park), and the walk around the rehabilitation area (which is actually only a small part of the park itself) takes about an hour as well. It was a pleasant drive out, and despite the threat of light rain, we only got sprinkled on a tiny bit as we were walking through (despite having to drive through a short downpour on our way there!). While we were going through, I took pictures of every animal we managed to see with my cell phone. *grins*

To read the details of our visit, continue on!

Posted in Animals, Life in General, Newfoundland, Pictures, Trips, Wildlife | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Camp NaNoWriMo: April 9th 2014

by tag Posted on April 9, 2014

Le gasp!

Yes, you see right! I’m actually posting something!

Heh. Things have been semi crazy/busy here lately (as in the last few months), and most of my posting energy has been devoted to the tagAught blog. Plus, I haven’t really had that much energy to write.

But you’re not here to read my ramblings – that’s another post. Nope, today is about Camp NaNoWriMo!

I was working on Camp NaNoWriMo in April of last year, doing a story called It Came From the Library.

When a sophomore mage decides to resurrect a sabretoothed cat through a summoning spell to get a better grade for his current term’s Paleo-biology course, things go wrong.

And then they go spectacularly wrong.

It’s left up to the mage responsible for the mess, and the cousin of his best friend, as well as a Homicide detective investigating the suspicious deaths of too many people, to fix things – before the city becomes overrun with creatures from the Paleocene to the Middle Pleistocene epochs.

— It Came From the Library synopsis, April 2013, from the Camp NaNoWriMo site

The summary has changed slightly – the sophomore mage in question is not a protagonist, and may even be killed early on in the novel – but other than that, there we go!

Anyway, I got about 17K words into in last year. And given that my actual protagonist (“the cousin of his best friend”) is autistic (though not diagnosed as such), April seems to be the appropriate month to work on it, given that everything is about Autism Awareness (which a lot of us feel should be “Autism Acceptance”) this month. So that’s what I’m going to be doing.

My current goal on Camp NaNo is 50K words, but I might decrease that as the month goes on, simply because I started rather late, and I do have other things I’ve got to work on this month. But I figured that I might as well devote some of my spare time to working on adding to ICFtL. 🙂

The link to my page on Camp NaNoWriMo (under TrudyG) is on the links page (big surprise, that! ;)).

🙂 tag0

Posted in Autism Spectrum, Camp NNWM, Creativity, NaNoWriMo, Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

NaNoWriMo 2013: NaNoWinNer!

by tag Posted on November 30, 2013

I did it!

Yes, it’s the last day. (Having been suffering a nasty headache from Sunday night onwards that effectively kept me on bed rest Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday kind of ruined the “finish the 50K by the 25th” plan.)

But I did it. For the first time in three years, I have a purple word count slider! Check it out!

No, I didn’t get 100K (and I’m not about to, in the remaining 8-1/2 hours of November), but I won for the first time since I moved to NL. I’m fairly satisfied with that, to be honest.

Yay me! 😉

NaNoWriMo 2013 Winner Cover Pic!
NaNoWriMo 2013 Winner Cover Pic!
NaNoWriMo 2013 Winner Square Pic!
NaNoWriMo 2013 Winner Square Pic!

‘Later, all!

😉 tag0

Posted in Accomplishments, Health, NaNoWriMo, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

NaNoWriMo 2013: Week 3 Success!

by tag Posted on November 22, 2013

And Week 3 of NaNoWriMo has provided my turnaround! While the weekend turned out to not be that good for writing, Monday I got about 6.1K words written, Tuesday (partly at the Second Cup on Stavenger Dr.) I got 6.2K written, and Wednesday I got over 4.4K written.  Yesterday I got very little written (480 words), but I was distracted with some other stuff, and also somewhat tired. Today, so far, I have written 3.6K, and my current total word count is 36,828 words. Today’s NaNoWriMo word count total goal is 36,667 words. In other words, I’m ba-ack! 😉

2.9K of the words today were written at the Starbucks at Chapters on Kenmount (just past the Avalon Mall). While I don’t have a whole lot of fondness for Starbucks (versus Second Cup, Timothy’s World News Cafe – which seems to be unique to Toronto, or at least Ontario, of the places I’ve visited – and certain Tim Horton’s – there are some not-so-good ones here in St. John’s, including the one at Ropewalk Lane, which has no outlets, which prevented me from really joining in the mid-month NL get-together last Wednesday, since my computer needs to be plugged in!), that particular Starbucks is familiar, since it’s where the Scrabble group gathers on Wednesday mornings, and it’s a fairly good place for getting writing done.

Anyway, my next NaNo goal (aside from maintaining and/or surpassing my current average daily word count, of course) is to try, over the next 9-1/12 days, to reach close to 100K words (aka approx. 50K on each novel I’m working on). Doubt I’ll get there, but it’s always worth a try! 🙂

And the other NaNo goal I’m working towards is to get a verified win on the first day available for checking, Monday – aka have 50K words written by Monday at midnight. Let’s hear it for crazy writing goals! 😉

Either way, it looks pretty definite at this point that I will win this year, and I’m feeling rather good about that. It’s been a long two years with no wins, and I want to have my bar in purple again this year! 😉

‘Later, all!

😉 tag0

[Edit 23:58 hrs.]Okay, total today was 5.2K words, and total word count was 38,429 words! Yay![/Edit]

Posted in Accomplishments, Creativity, NaNoWriMo, Writing | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

NaNoWriMo 2013: Halfway Mark

by tag Posted on November 15, 2013

So, we’re at the halfway mark of NaNoWriMo, and I… haven’t been doing as well as I hoped this year. (Still by far better than last year, of course, but not as well as I hoped.) The goal was to be at 25K words by midnight today (well, my goal was to be at 50K, but… meh), and I’m at… just over 14.6 as of 23:00 hrs.

This is, however, more than 1/4 of the ultimate word count goal, so I’m still counting it as a bit of a win that I can work with.

The problem is, I apparently hit the Week Two Doldrums a bit early. I think I’m getting out of them, but issues I’ve been having with the weather, lack of exercise (which ended Wednesday), and other stuff – including my re-discovery of Heather Dale, a wonderful Toronto musician who does Celtic ballad-style and SCA music – and a few other distractions, kind of dragged me down for a while there. (But, hey, on the plus side? I’ve now got some wonderful new music to add to my “Songs to Write By” playlists… and more stuff for my Christmas wish list! I may have downloaded HDale’s songs off YouTube, but I want to buy them legitimately. And check out Heather’s website – there’s even a free album download available! – and you can buy physical CDs or MP3s from there.)

So, back to my writing. Will be doing some word sprints this weekend and into next week, I suspect. But all is good.

‘Later, all!

😉 tag0

Posted in Accomplishments, Creativity, Filk, Folk, Music, NaNoWriMo, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NaNoWriMo 2013: Ready, Set, Start!

by tag Posted on November 1, 2013

Well, it’s now the first of November. Meaning we are into NaNoWriMo! Yay!

Turns out, I’m not just doing The Trickster’s Trade (though don’t worry, Dad, Mayumi and Darrel are still the priority); I’m also doing a second novel that I’ve been meaning to get more written of for several years now, currently called The Pack. So my personal goal for this November will be to get 100K words – 50K for each of them. (Winning NaNo will be good. Getting to my personal goal – which I’ve accomplished 2 out of the 3 years I’ve won, in terms of word count, will be even better. Actually finishing both books will be a delight! ;))

As mentioned above, TTT has priority, meaning I’ll work on that first each day. (Today, I’ve written 1,904 words on it so far – more than the daily goal – yay me!) Once I’ve got at least the daily goal met, I’ll also work on The Pack, which has been stalled on v7.0, beginning of Chp. 3, for several years now (even longer than TTT, which I got some writing done on a couple of years ago). Both are stories that I really want to tell, and really want to get finished, so NaNo is, of course, the perfect time to work on them.

(No fanfiction words will be counted for NaNo, even if I also write some fanfic – Sanzo presented me with the summary and an image from “Summer’s Pleasure”, the second in my Saiyuki Seasons series [Pt. 1, “Winter’s Treasure”, has 4-1/2 of 7 parts written thus far] last night just before I fell asleep. How do you throttle a character in your head?)

Anyway, that’s the report from the start of NaNoWriMo 2013. Enjoy, all!

[Edit: 23:56 hrs.] Got 364 words written on TP, so that’s a total of 2268 for me today. Yay me! 1.36 times the daily goal! [/End Edit]

‘Later!

😉 tag0

Posted in Accomplishments, Creativity, Fic, NaNoWriMo, Saiyuki, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment