Tag Archives: my works

BAckups and the importance thereof

Ideal backup system… that I didn’t have.

With NaNoWriMo coming up on us once more, I thought of doing something different this time around. Instead of starting a brand new manuscript, I would dust off the very first story I wrote for my very first NaNoWriMo and try to edit at least 50k words. 

My reasoning for that was two-fold. First of all, I had been so busy at work since August that I didn’t have time to even think about a story to write, yet alone plan it out. I am a pantserish planner, which means that I need to work on the backstories of my main characters and have at least some of the worldbuilding figured out before I start writing. I usually also do a loose outline of where I want my story to go, though most of the time the plan doesn’t survive the encounter with the enemy. Most of the time, I am lucky of my beginning and my ending stay the same. The rest of the story usually meanders through paths I hadn’t even imagined when I initially planned it out.

Nevertheless, I need to have at least some structure before I start writing. I tried to go complete pantser during NaNoWriMo 2020 because I had been just as busy at work in the previous months and couldn’t plan anything, but that didn’t turn out so well. Oh, I still managed to pound out 50k words and won NaNo, but the story is a complete mess that will need a serious rewrite to wrangle it into some semblance of shape. Oh, and I discovered only about 90k in what the story actually was about, so…

Plus I had at least 4 different first drafts just lying in my desk drawers gathering dust. If I ever want to publish at least one of them, I need to learn not only how to finish a first draft, but also how to edit it well enough to transform it into a final draft. So I decided to dust off my partially edited first draft Of Broken Things and give it another go, especially since, from what I remembered, it didn’t particularly suck.

I powered up my computer, went into the folder in which I keep all of my stories… and almost had a heart attack. Of Broken Things wasn’t there. ALL my other stories are there in neat little folders, EXCEPT for this one. 

Queue nervous breakdown.

I went to my drop box where I usually save all of my Scrivener backups and same thing – I have everything apart from Of Broken Things. 

With shaking hands and a developing nervous tick, I did a search of my Gmail inbox… I got bits and pieces that I had emailed back and forth with one of my beta readers, but not the full manuscript.

After about an hour of frantic searching on all electronic mediums where I usually save or backup my work, I was forced to admit that I didn’t have a digital copy of this book anywhere. It’s like the gods of internet and computers decided to erase it out of existence. I don’t know how that happened. I mean, I have ALL of my other manuscripts I wrote, including some half-baked short stories that I toyed with and abandoned. I don’t remember deleting Of Broken Things, and why would I even do that? It was my first ever novel and I actually rather like it…

Anyway, that’s when the realization dawned that the ONLY copy of my first novel that I have is the printed version full of annotation that I had stated editing 4 years ago then put in a desk drawer when I moved to Texas. I am glad that at least that survived the transition, even if the digital copy didn’t. 

Yup, that’s exactly how it this manuscript looks like… all 342 printed and heavily annotated pages of it.

Which, rather ironically, makes it rather perfect for NaNoWriMo this year, because not only do I have to decipher my own edits on a printed copy, but I also have to retype everything back into Scrivener. So I will be getting my 50k words one way or the other and hopefully a better flowing story by the end of this adventure.

However the biggest lesson I learned from this little adventure is – always backup your files. And don’t just back them up in one place, have several copies on different mediums. That way if something happens to one, you can always get it back from a different storage. Oh, and while you do that, do check on your work from time to time to make sure you have the most recent versions of all your files. And when you clean up your backups, make sure you don’t delete anything important by mistake. 

And with that, I want to wish everyone who is participating in this crazy adventure a productive NaNoWriMo. Good luck, let your imaginations fly and your pens follow!

Writing Progress Report.

I haven’t posted an update on my various writing projects in a while, so I think I’m overdue for one, especially since I will be starting a new first draft for NaNoWriMo 2015. So here is what I am working on, what I set aside to grow and mature, and what I had to shelve until better times.

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THINGS I’M WORKING ON NOW:

Of Broken Things

This is the first story I had ever finished, and like any first book, it needs A LOT of work to transform from a messy disjointed first draft into something I wouldn’t be too ashamed to put out into the world.

I have been doing edits and rewrites on it off and on for the past two years, with long interruptions to focus on something else, because otherwise I get the desire to pull my hair out, bang my head on the wall, and laugh hysterically. The good news is that two out of three parts are now fully rewritten. The bad news is that Part 3 will require a MAJOR rewrite. I’m kinda dreading that one, actually, because I’m pretty sure it will bring me to the brink of a nervous breakdown by the time I’m done with it. So that story will remain on the shelf until I’m done with NaNo and the revision of Choices.

But I discovered one good thing about going back to edit a story I wrote two years ago. I can see just how much I’ve grown as a writer. It’s easy to get discouraged in the writing process, because the changes are so gradual that they often get unnoticed. Sometimes we even feel like we are regressing instead of improving. That’s when you should pick up one of your old drafts, because you look at it and you think, “Wow, I’ve really come a long way! This is ghastly… but I know exactly how to make it better.”

The Choices we Make.

I had tried to write this story down several times during the years and gave up, but I finished the first draft during NaNo 2014. Well, in January 2015 after that Nano, to be precise. But I haven’t touched it since then. This is the second book I’ve ever finished so it doesn’t need as much work as Of Broken Things, but I will still need to do a pretty significant rewrite of Part 3.

This is a recurring trend for me, I’m afraid – I tend to drop the ball in the third part of the story. I get cold feet and decide not to follow the conflict to its logical resolution. I am too nice to my characters to make them suffer, even if it’s necessary to the story. So the climax and resolution of the main conflict falls short of the expectations.  I know exactly what I need to change to bring this story to the next level, so Choices are in the first place in my editing pipeline after I’m done with NaNo.

After all, my beta extraordinaire and most ruthless critique partner says that once this story is fixed, it’s good enough to try querying agents for traditional publishing with. Coming from her, it’s A HUGE compliment.

Blue blood on the page!
Blue blood on the page!

Mists of the Crossworlds.

This novella is fully rewritten. The story is as good as it will be plot and character-wise. Now I just need to tighten up the prose and hunt down all the pesky grammatical and spelling errors.  And find an editor who wouldn’t cost me an arm and a leg.

I think about self-publishing this story sometimes in the December – January timeframe. This will likely be an adventure on its own, so expect a few blog post about that particular endeavor.

Shadow Hunters.

This is my new project. I’m planning on hammering down the first draft during NaNo and after it (and be done with it by the end of January at the latest). As of today, the worldbuilding is done, and all the main characters have complete bios. I am working on the outline, which promises to be 25k words long all on its own, the longest outline I’ve written yet. I’m done with Parts 1 and 2, but I still need to outline parts 3 and 4 before November. I can feel the stress levels rising.

 

WHAT I PLAN TO WORK ON IN THE NEXT COUPLE YEARS:

Ghost and the Good Doctor (temporary title).

This is a novel-length story that popped into my head after listening to the k-pop group BigBang’s song Monster.

I have written down the scene that sprung into my mind during the song and jotted down some details about my protagonist, Ghost, as well as some other characters. I barely scratched the surface on the worldbuilding front though. This will probably become my NaNoWriMo 2016 project, because I have too many things to edit to be able to start working on another full-scale novel until then. It’s hopping around my plot bunny enclosure right now, growing fat on fresh grass and the corpses of other, weaker plot bunnies.

Eye of the Norns Cycle:

After I had published the first short story about Ryssa in this anthology, I got the idea to write several more stories about her journeys and put them in chronological order. I have written the next story in the cycle, but haven’t had time to edit it yet. I have also outlined one more story and have ideas for at least 3 more. This might be a project I work off and on in between the revisions of Choices next year.

Breathless.

This short story will be a companion piece to Of Broken Things and will take place 15 years before the events of the novel. I know exactly what it will be about, but I haven’t done any outlining on it yet. I’m not in a hurry on this one because the novel itself still needs a lot of work.

The Price we pay.

Sequel to Choices, taking place a few months after the first book ends. It will follow a different set of protagonists, because Sky and Selena’s story was resolved by the end of book 1, but the story of the Free Kingdom is only just beginning. But do not fear, Sky and Selena will still make an appearance, because they aren’t going anywhere.

I haven’t even started brainstorming this story yet. I have a vague idea where I want it to go and who my protagonists will be, but nothing beyond that. So I might get around to it in 2016, but 2017 would be more optimistic.

 

 

Of course, this list is not set in stone, because plot bunnies can attack me at any time and just not let go until I write them. This year I got Shadow Hunters and Ghost and the Good Doctor like that, seemingly out of nowhere, so who knows what next year brings me.

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The songs that inspired my stories.

As writers, we are creative people, and everything and anything can nudge us towards the next story we absolutely have to tell. It can be a movie or TV series we saw, a video game we played, a book we just finished, or simply the way a flight of sparrows contrasted against a crimson sunset. To me, music plays a very big part in discovering new stories as well.

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Let me explain. Unlike a lot of writing friends I talked to, I CANNOT write with music. Absolutely not. I don’t mind some background noise, like in a café or restaurant, or I would never be able to write on my lunch break, but as soon as there is a song with lyrics playing – it’s game over. I get distracted. I lose my train of thought and my writing session gets irrevocably derailed. I don’t know why. I would say that I start listening to the lyrics instead of writing, but then songs in a language I don’t understand (Japanese or Korean for example), still break my concentration, so that’s probably not it. Strangely enough, TV as background noise doesn’t have the same effect. Go figure.

Anyway, I don’t listen to music when I write, at least not if I want to be productive. However, music plays a huge part in the creative process anyway. All the stories I wrote so far have a particular song attached to them which acts as the soundtrack and the embodiment of that story.

Sometimes that songs comes during the writing process – I would hear it on the radio and have that “aha!” moment that tells me this song fits my story to the T. Sometimes I would find that song early in the planning and outlining stages. And sometimes I would find a song that would resonate with me for no particular reason, that I would obsess over for days if not weeks before  a story comes, and I understand that this songs belongs to it.

So today I wanted to share the songs that inspired and helped me write the stories I have written so far (and the one I’m plotting right now).

 

Of Broken Things:

This was the first story I’ve ever finished and it’s also the only science fiction story I have written so far. So when I heard Radioactive by Imagine Dragons, I couldn’t help but feel that it captured the mood of my story and my world perfectly. This future world where Aiden and GMS798 live in might be peaceful and prosperous on the outside, but there is still something toxic and radioactive brewing in the shadows. Because people will always remain the same, and power has a tendency to corrupt even the best of us.

“We’ll paint it red to fit right in.” That’s something GMS798 could have thought several times when he discovered that nothing really changed in the 100 years he’d been in cryo-sleep.

 

The Choices we make:

This story was song less for a long while, probably because I wasn’t sure where it was going when I first started writing. This is probably why I put it away for over a year and finished Of Broken Things before I dusted it off and finally managed to do an outline.

While writing my first draft, two songs stayed with me and I came to associate them with this story. It’s  Dance with the Devil by Breaking Benjamin and Demons by Imagine Dragons.

These songs both show that the characters in this story have to face some downright frightening things and uneven odds and also face their own demons in order to emerge better people on the other side, or die trying.

Shadow Hunters:

This is the latest project I’m working on. The idea came to me after watching the Korean Drama City Hunter, but it also came with a song attached to it (a song that has nothing to do with Korean dramas by the way). It’s Shatter Me by Lindsay Stirling.

This song is so perfect for this story, because it’s about young adults who still have a lot of growing up to do. They have to find their own way in this world, which takes a lot of courage, especially if that first step on the road towards the future they want means breaking with tradition or family wishes. So the fear of change that Lindsay talks about in her song is very relevant to the story.

Plus one of the characters is a gifted violin player 🙂

 

Still unnamed plot bunny that might be a future story:

As you can see, any story I write ends up getting at least one song associated with it. So when I happen to hear a song and it just won’t let me go, I tend to stop and think about it. Is that a story that’s trying to get to me?

This happened 3 weeks ago,  when I first heard the song Monster by BigBang.

Kpop is not something I usually listen to. First, I don’t understand the lyrics. Second, I don’t really like rap. But I kept obsessing over this particular song for some reason. I kept listening to it over and over. I even bought it on ITunes! I kept wondering why it touched me so much when I had to google the lyrics to even understand what the song was about. Then, last night, the miracle happened – the plot bunny finally hopped into my brain and made itself at home. Everything fell into place – the song and the story. So I guess I have my next project lined up after I am done with Shadow Hunters…

 

 

And now a question for my readers. Do you guys have songs that you associate with the stories you write or read? Is it just one or two songs or do you collect an entire playlist for each project?

Mists of the Crossworlds – the story changes yet again.

Not over

First of all, I wanted to thank all the wonderful people who had agreed to beta read this story. Your advice was priceless and very insightful, and I owe you big time! You took the time out of your busy life to journey with Lori through the mists of the crossworlds and bring back your impressions, and the story will only get better because of them.

… and the result of it is that the story will change yet again. Oh, all of my beta readers loved the Mists in its present iteration, and I could probably publish this novella as it is, but upon reading the comments, I realized that there was yet another layer to the story that begged to be explored. So I decided to postpone the release to see where else this story could take me.

If you have been following this blog for a while, you probably know that Mists is one of my works that had undergone the most transformation since its inception a year ago. It had started as a measly 4k words short story which described how Lori lead a caravan through the crossworlds. Then It grew to 8k and sent Lori looking for her friend and bringing him home. But then I decided that Theo wasn’t a lot puppy and that having him brought back home safely wasn’t really the end, so they went on another wild adventure that jumped the word count of Mists to 20k and transformed it from a short story into a novella. And now this new layer will add at least another 10k on top of that.

I’m afraid that by the time I’m finally done with them, Mists would have grown to the size of a novel. I am a bit baffled. I have NEVER encountered a story that just kept throwing new content at me every time I thought I was done with it before. It’s almost like it doesn’t want to be finished or something…

Bangs her head on the desk

Sobs hysterically in a corner

Goes back to the drawing board to outline the rest of the story

So yep, I’ll keep you posted on the progress of this one. Now the tentative release date for Mists is June 1st.

On the bright side, I finally found a beautiful cover for it once it’s done and ready to go out into the world, and you are the first to see it. Ta-da!!!!

 

Mists of the Crossworlds.
Mists of the Crossworlds.

Isn’t it beautiful?

And now I’m going back to my dark writing cave to put some more words on the page. I have a vague idea where this story wants to go, so I need to work out the details. Hopefully, once I’m done with this rewrite, Mists will be truly and finally finished and ready to be published. I wouldn’t hold my breath on that though, since I’ve said that at least twice before…