New Year, New Focus

First I want to apologise for seeming to drop of the face of the blogging planet.  It wasn’t my intention but with moving home, moving country and a whole host of new things to learn, I got a bit overwhelmed and needed to take an internet break.  The break also included one from writing too, while I got my thoughts straight again and could focus on plots and not “Argh this is all so new and what do I do?!”.

So, second I’d like to say…  Happy New Year to everyone 🙂  I hope you all had a fun time and that 2012 is starting out as a good year for you all.

I’m working on two short stories at the moment which will be posted on this site later this month, if they make the cut.  Right now one of them is going much better than the other but I think there’s still hope!  Nothing an edit or five won’t fix.

As far as the novel goes… I’ve made an executive decision to turn my focus to my 2011 NaNoWriMo novel, Pink Mist, instead of the 2005 one.  As I wrote in an earlier post, Pink Mist pushed the other ideas aside and demanded that it be written for NaNo.  Well, the story is still clambering to be written first and the world that it’s in is throwing ideas at me left, right and center.  Which is great 🙂 but I do wish they’d order themselves a bit better hehe.

As a teaser, Pink Mist is (currently) focused on good vs evil and how the smallest of actions can have huge effects for either cause.  The protagonist is an assassin, who still has no name.  But I think as an assassin its ok for her to keep some anonymity 😉

January 12, 2012
Writing
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Lest We Forget: Rememberance Day

In Flanders Fields
– John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

November 13, 2011
Writing
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Scribbles Blog Hop

Today I’m taking part in a blog hop hosted by two of the people in my writing group 🙂  They thought it would be a fun idea for everyone to share their writing journals or notebooks, to see how each of us take notes or collect our thoughts.  I agree, fun idea!

I started writing very young but in Middle School, when I started to get serious about it, I bought a pad of lined paper and used that to write my poety in.  I still have that notebook and use it even now (although there are very few pages left!) but unfortunately it isn’t finished crossing the ocean between England and America yet, so I can’t show you that one.  It is really only poetry that gets written in there though.  For a long time I’ve had a sort of mental separation with poetry and novels – I can only write poems with a pen/pencil and paper, but I can only write novels on a computer.

Taking notes for novels is something that I generally do mentally.  So at the moment, this the state of my writing notebook lol:

Yes, empty notebook makes me sad 🙁

It’s strange, because while studying architecture at university one of the things that was instilled into us all was to keep a sketch book around to do quick on-the-spot sketches of things that were interesting.  Obviously, cameras are useful for this too but sometimes it helps to actually draw them so you get a feel for the shape and design.  I think the same is probably true with writing.  I tend to keep all of my novel ideas in my head and play around with them there.  But since starting NaNoWriMo this year, I’ve realised that having some form of note system on paper would be a big help, much like my architecture sketch book (which I would show but again, it’s crossing the ocean right now).

So my notes have progressed from my head this month and ended up on paper.  Although as I don’t yet own a notebook (I borrowed the other one from my husband) or any kind of organisation system, they end up looking like this:

But!  My saving grace has been discovering Scrivener.  It’s allowed me to stop being eaten alive by post-it notes and actually keep my notes and thoughts together in one place in the research folder for the novel.  Oh my god, what an amazing programme!  So now, my note taking has gone to a whole new level:

Brian and I had a lot of fun taking these pictures, getting post-it’s to stick on your face while you’re laughing is harder than you think! lol!  If you enjoyed my blog hop entry (or even if you didn’t!) take a look at the other blogs taking part in the hop today and how they keep their notes 🙂

Danielle La Paglia
Anne Michaud
Marianne Su
Victoria D Griesdoorn
Ren Warom
J. A. Campbell
Tammy Crosby
Maria Kelly
Chrissey Harrison
Tony Noland
Larry Kollar

November 11, 2011
Writing
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Slow And Steady Something Something

My NaNoWriMo progress is slow this year.  I know in the past I’m normally ahead of the 1667 words per day but this year I’m trailing at 2527 total at the end of day 3.  Le sigh.  It’s not the end of the world, I know that this early on it doesn’t create a huge deficit to catch up on later, but I’m feeling generally unmotivated this year for some reason.  Part of me feels like there are normally more NaNo pep talks and things to spur you on by now, but perhaps I’m just making that up!  I know I miss the word count bars on their forums, as well as the word count widgets for posting elsewhere.  As small and seemingly unimportant as those were, they’re actually a really good push to make you write more – racing against writing buddies and other people who have word count widgets on their blogs, etc.

But, enough of that wallowing in self-unmotivation! (That’s totally a word)

I started NaNo thinking I would be writing the first book in a (so far) 2 book series that I have in mind, the first with a title choice of either Hellbound or Devil May Care – my favourite title seems to change as often as the weather so I’m hoping it’ll become more clear when it’s written.  Except that all kind of went out the window when I sat down, opened up Scrivener, and started typing a more recent novel idea of mine for a book titled Pink Mist.  It obviously wanted to be written first, so it’s wish is my command!  This is possibly the first book I’ve written where I know the title but have no name for the protagonist.  She just doesn’t want one!  I suppose as she is an assassin that anonymity is probably better for her in the long run, but I think she’s going to get stuck with a nickname (or two) whether she likes it or not.

In between writing about no-name and her shenanigans, I’ve been working a bit more on this website with updates and also setting up my Facebook “Author Page” which I’m very excited about.  Although I probably shouldn’t be as excited as I am, there’s no shoes involved after all.  You can check it out via the link below (please do 🙂 ) and hopefully “like” it, or you can get there by clicking the Facebook button over there on the right. *points*->

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Natalie-Westgate/309459942413821

November 4, 2011
Writing
10 Comments

Tis The Season

Yes, it’s that time of year again!  Time for all of the planning, making sure you keep in touch with family and friends and stocking up on food and supplies.  I can’t believe the past year has flown by, it seemed like only yesterday that we were all doing this NaNoWriMo prep! 😉

Actually, I didn’t get to take part in NaNoWriMo last year.  Brian and I had only just got married a couple of months before and the America move plannng was well under way, so things were pretty hectic without adding 50,000 words into the mix.  I’m torn this year though between a couple of ideas: one that’s been in my mind for quite a long time, or one that’s a fairly recent idea but is set in the same “world” as the previous idea.  Or, I suppose, I could be a NaNoRebel and work on my manuscript that was started in NaNoWriMo 2005.  But I think something new is better, gets the ball rolling on other work that’s floating around in my brain.

This will be the first time doing NaNo in America – yep, I’ve finally moved as of 10 days ago 🙂  We’re actually off to a resort today that was Brian’s Anniversary gift for me (that we couldn’t do until after I’d moved).  It’ll be nice to get away and relax before the hectic month of November.

As well as writing the 50,000 words, I’ll be going to my first ever Thanksgiving to Brian’s family in another state.  Very exciting but I hope they won’t mind me turning up with my laptop and NaNo notes in hand hehe!

One last NaNo related(ish) note.  I’m going to be disabling comments on my blog after this weekend for a while.  I went to update my profile on the NaNo website, to add this web address in, and almost right after I did it my site is being spammed to hell.  I have this site linked on several other places and never had any issues before, but this was going from zero spam to a lot right after I posted it on my profile there 🙁  I’ll notify them, although I’m not sure what they could do about it anyway, but for now (or very soon) the comments will be disabled on here.

Back to better things, good luck to everyone taking part in November!  Just remember that every word counts, so even if you can only fit in 5 minutes of writing then take it and just write as much as you can in those few minutes.  It’ll all add up in the end 🙂  Be sure to check out the fun things on their website too!  This Nanotoon was me a few days ago 😉

October 28, 2011
Writing
7 Comments