Tag Archives: Stories

Nanowrimo: Day 12

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I’m so behind, it’s maddening. I’m still three days behind, but I was six when the day started, so at least I’m making up some ground. I would like to catch up tomorrow, but that’s unlikely. I just hope I don’t get further behind.

November has been brutal, writing wise. First, I had a presentation to prepare. Then I had present it, in Oklahoma City, more than five hours away from home. I wrote Sunday, worked Monday and drove to OKC, no writing done. Tuesday was the class and presentation, then the drive back to Amarillo. No writing done. Wednesday was a long day, and I ended up working a full 12 hours, spent the night in Amarillo again, then a full day on Thursday. Too exhausted to write, and the first night home since I left on Monday.

I meant to write on Friday, and I took my laptop with me to Amarillo, and set up to write at Roasters while I waited for a friend to drive in. We were going to meet for lunch, and I thought it a perfect time to get out of the house, drink some coffee and write. Nope. My computer’s battery was dead, and I left the charger at home. Crap!

I ended up going to Walmart, buying a composition notebook and a pack of pens, and sat down to write out a vague roadmap for my novel. While I’ve stated on countless occasions that I’m a pantser, I’m feeling as though having no plan isn’t working for me. I need at least a general outline of what I want to write. I may not follow it exactly, but at least it’s a guide.

So now, finally, Saturday comes, and I can write. I should have written more, but I’ve played too much online. Damn Facebook. I’m still please with what I have so far, the outline giving me some direction on where I need to go with the story. I decided as I was outlining that the story needs to be organized into three parts. So, maybe planning is helpful.

I have a long way to go before the month is over, and longer until I get to the end of the novel. I wish I didn’t have so much happening to distract me from my writing. This coming week is Inventory Week at work, and it’ll be long days and nights until Thursday. The following week is Black Friday, again a lot of long days to prepare. The last week of November has me going back to OKC for another project. I need to be beyond the 50K mark before then. I don’t know if I’ll have time to write on the 29th or 30th!

 

A month of dedicated writing

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nanowrimo_2016_webbadge_participantNational Novel Writing Month is less than a week away. In six days, people from around the world will start their goal to write fifty-thousand words in thirty days. That’s around 1,666 per day. That’s a lot of words. That’s a competition wherein you compete against yourself to see if you can do it.

I’ve managed to win every year since I started back in 2011. That’s five years of writing. That’s 260,137 words that I have tallied since I first discovered it on November 1st of that first year. I logged on to my computer at around 6:30 in the morning, saw NaNoWriMo on the trending box on Yahoo, and decided to investigate. I’m glad I did.

A little history: I had always wanted to write a book. How many of us have said that, either to our friends, or even to ourselves. I had countless times. I even started several aborted attempts, giving up even before I had written that first page, often even before that first paragraph. Writing is hard!

But that on that cold, November morning, as I sat there glued to the monitor at my desk at my work in the hospital, I knew that I had to do it. I needed something to take me out of myself, to pull me out of the pain and loathing I had fallen into. My marriage had unraveled back in January, ending in my filing for divorce and being finalized in August. A second relationship had just fallen apart at the beginning of October, and the weight of it all came crashing down on me. I was heartbroken and miserable. I needed a way out!

So I signed up immediately. I told my friend about it, and she signed up for it, too. Unlike her, I began to write in earnest, writing with abandon, not bothering to care if it made sense. NaNoWriMo gave me the permission I needed to give myself to write, just write. I watched as a story came to life. I sat there in shock that I actually had the potential to write anything longer than a few measly paragraphs.

I came is at 52,395 that first year. I was proud of myself. I had done it. Though it would take months, years to get over that heartbreak, NaNoWriMo had given me my first outlet. I spent the next year writing one story after another, clearing my mind, purging my soul. It was the catharsis I desperately needed. The page was the vessel into which I poured my misery, emptying even the most desperate and intimate suffering from my being.

I had planned on publishing my books, but I haven’t. I keep saying I want to, but here I am, five years later, and nary a book in sight. I keep saying that what I have written deserves to be read, but I’ve kept them locked up, out of sight, fearing to let myself fall victim to the worst critics among us, scared to inflict further damage on my already fragile self-esteem.

But what did it matter? I’d written something. I had proven to myself that I can do it. I had proven that I had the capability to put into words the often confused images in my thoughts. It hadn’t been easy. Sometimes I had to force myself to write, but I had done it, and I was glad.

Will I do so again this year? I think I will. I haven’t fleshed out any ideas yet, but that doesn’t concern me. I’ve always been a pantser rather than a planner. I’ll start to write the moment I’m allowed to write. I settle on an idea and go from there.

Ultimately, I would love to publish something, but that’s no longer my end goal. When I write something worth sharing, I will. Until then, I’ll continue to write and post the occasional short story, continue to hammer out what I’ve written, working and reshaping until something moves me to either seek out a publisher, or publish it myself.

Giving planning another go

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20150720_210140I bought myself a composition notebook yesterday after I left my writer’s group. I didn’t hadn’t planned on it, but I needed to buy a few things at the store and I saw that they had begun to set Back to School. I decided to check it out and lo and behold, I saw a stack of them for fifty cents. I bought two.

So today at lunch, as I sat in my car, I pulled one of them out and began to loosely sketch out who my main characters are, what their role will be and their probable motivations. I’ve tried to plan and plot before, but it’s never worked for me. I’m going to try again. I probably won’t create a strict outline, I know that won’t work, but I think I general idea of major plot points will suffice.

I should get going. I have a reality to create, a journey to figure out, and frankly I need a snack. I’m thinking cake. Cake goes good with writing, at least that’s what I believe. If anyone wants to bring me a coffee, that would be awesome, too.

Book Review: Through Kestrel’s Eyes

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Kestrel

Through Kestrel’s Eyes © 2013 Yvonne Hertzberger

Through Kestrel’s Eyes is the second book of the Earth’s Pendulum Series by Yvonne Hertzberger. I reviewed the first book, Back from Chaos back in August. All the major characters are back, except in this book, the story is a first-person narrative as told by Klast and Bresna’s daughter, a seer named Liannis.

Liannis is a young woman, newly come into her responsibilities. Chief among her abilities include the gift of foresight, usually given to her in a series of dreams from Mother Earth, and the ability to truth-tell, which she uses if a prisoner needs to be interrogated, of if someone’s loyalty is called into question.

The seer works for Earth, a goddess personified, who uses Liannis as an intermediary to maintain balance. Earth’s ability to provide for her inhabitants is strained by man’s refusal to live in harmony with one another. War, and man’s desire to subjugate a defensless populace, causes Earth to suffer, which in turn leads to drought and famine.

The book is roughly a two year span, between Liannis’ taking up the mantle of seer from her mentor, and the trails Bargia, her home, faces with the neighboring demenses, (what we would think of as a kingdom.) Though she has pledged no allegiance to any lord, having grown up in Bargia, she works primarily with Lord Gaelen and his allies.

Trouble comes to Bargia on two fronts, first from Lieth, where a weak lord is disposed and a ruthless despot assumes power, abusing the populace for his own enjoyment. Then from Gharn, where the lord has also been deposed but Dugal, his heir, seeks to reclaim his birthright. Lord Gaelen must choose where to focus his attention, Bargia not strong enough to fight two separate battles, though both threaten not only Bargia’s safety, but Earth’s ability to provide.

Through the conflicts, drought plagues the lands, putting further hardships on the land, making achieving a lasting peace all the more important. Liannis works tirelessly, even putting not only herself in danger, but also her loved ones, all for the sake of Mother Earth. At risk is not only her home demense of Bargia and her allies, but the survival of all mankind.

First let me say that trying to summarize the book is almost an impossible task, as there’s so much going on, with a cast of characters that come together to create a rich and complicated story. At its heart is our seer, Liannis, aided by a young man Merriest, who had the misfortune of losing a leg in his first battle.

There’s also the added dynamic of the seer and her parents, her father Klast, Gaelen’s most trusted adviser and spy, and Bresna, Lady’s Marja’s best friend. Woven into is her familiarity with the ruling family, and her duty to remain impartial for the service of Earth.

The story is much more about about the necessary evils a country must fight in order to achieve a lasting peace. It’s about the suffering her people endure, and how dependent the population is to her leadership for their survival.

But for me, the crux of the book is the Liannis’ personal relationships, not only with family and friends, but all those she serves. There’s a depth of warmth that is at once real and moving. She cares, and through her made me care. She loves, and I came to love her and the rest of the characters as well. The added friction of a potential romantic attachment, one that she believes to be taboo, is familiar and should resonate with everyone.

Through Kestrel’s Eyes is a well-written novel, as is the rest of the series. It moved me to laughter and to tears. I loved it so much that I immediately read the third -though you have to wait for my review – and I immediately wrote the author to tell her how much I loved her books.

It should be no wonder that I should rate this book highly, 5 out of 5 stars. Even after reading it for a second time, I couldn’t contain my emotions, my eyes tearing up from Liannis trials, that I had to stop often to dry them. It isn’t to often that a book does that to me. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Yvonne Hertzberger
Back from Chaos

List of Book Reviews
Next review –  Ensnared
Previous Review – Dark the Night Descending

This is the end, or is it a beginning?

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I have no choice now. I have to give in to the inevitable. I should have seen this coming a long time ago, and maybe I did and I tried to delay it by walking away. Now I can see that I have to give in. I’m sorry, but this is the end of my way of life. I can barely stand the thought of it, and it’s breaking my heart to say it, but here goes nothing.

I think I may have to outline this story.

There it is. Mock me if you must, but my time as a pantser is all but over. No, don’t cry for me, at least not yet. All is not lost, but there are moments in life when one must confront one’s fears in order to mature and grow. This for me is one of those moments. It’s a little bittersweet.

I may be overreacting.

So here’s the deal. I’ve been working on this book that I call Lily, which is the name of my main character, imagine that. I want to write it as a series – probably a trilogy just so I can be like all the cool writers out there – so I’m having to do more planning than I’m used to. It’s not going all too well at the moment.

I can see some key scenes in my head, and I’m working on trying to weave them together into a cohesive narrative. I’ve written most of book one already, though there’s a lot I have to correct and clean up before I’m ready for anyone to take a look. For the rest, I have an ending in mind, key plot points I need to address, but when and how are the questions keeping me awake.

Maybe I’m not ready for this, but then if not now, when? I’ve talked this through with my confidant and I think this may work, at least if I frame it correctly, hence the need for an outline. I’ve never used one, but I think my story is becoming too complicated and convoluted to try to write this piecemeal, without a road map to guide me.

Since I’ve never done an outline, I have no idea how to do it. I guess I could do a little research into outlining, or maybe ask other writers how to create one, but I know I won’t. I’m writing my story, and I know what I need, so I guess any outline that I need to create must serve my needs and not try to live up to someone else’s definition of what an outline should be. Which now begs the question, why am I bringing this up?

But just for giggles, how many of you work from an outline? Anyone?