New Fiction Idea #0

It occurred to me that I can link back to story profiles for just about everything but Along the Winding Road. Better late than never.

Working Title: Along the Winding Road

Genre: Post-Apocalyptic/Romance

Protagonist: Charlotte Heiman, a six-foot twenty-year-old who works as a zombie hunter for her village—more specifically, one of its restaurants. She's determined, optimistic, and a little flirty, and family is her highest priority.

Other Main Characters: Arthur Deering, an English twenty-four-year-old of Chinese descent. He is an excellent archer but isn't the best at social interaction, particularly after being in isolation for years.
(John) Dalton Tolbert, a very blonde twenty-four-year-old who fanboys over swords but does most of his fighting with a staff. He's energetic and social and prides himself on his wingman abilities.

Antagonists: Zombies and distance along with some other survivors.

Setting: Four years after the zombie apocalypse. Some zombies are still hanging around, but they're not so threatening anymore. Place-wise, it's across Texas, between Killeen and Hunt.

Plot: Charlotte sets out to find her younger brother Blake, who was away at camp when the zombies attacked. On the way, she has to contend with various enemies, but Arthur and Dalton are happy to help her along—particularly the former, who quickly develops a romantic interest in her.

Point of View: Third person, omniscient.

No One's Really Sure What Became of Waldo

(Title from the "Hot for Teacher" music video.)

So, what's the point of coming to love my characters or story ideas here if you never get to find out what happened to them? I've decided to post an update of what (little) progress I've made with these.

Most have been untouched, unfortunately. There's just not enough time to toy with them.

The stories that have at least been elaborated upon in my mind:

• Worldbuilding progress: New Fiction Idea #34, New Fiction Idea #17, Macbay Transportation Services
• Plotting progress: Storm Clouds Rise, Wanderers, Mount, Entrapped
• Characterisation progress: Storm Clouds Rise, New Fiction Idea #17

The stories that have received extra attention through prompts: New Fiction Idea #27 (Promptness), Roughhouse (Prompt Writing #3), Bloom (Prompt Writing #4), Macbay Transportation Services (Prompt Writing #2)

The stories that have begun:

• Recently: I'm With the Band (12 words), Piracy Cruise Lines (1,149 words), Figments (124 words), Chasers (981 words)
• In days past [documents lost]: Special, Chemists

The stories that have made serious progress: Mayflies (14,872 words), The Long and Winding Road (107,529 words; 90,286 words in original fiction version)

It feels slow, but it's at least nice to know I have been going somewhere with some of these. What kind of progress do you expect—for me, or yourself?

In Name Only

Names are quite important when it comes to writing.

Character names are probably the most obvious the of nomenclature. A lot of the time characters like to name themselves, but sometimes they'll make me do the work instead. While Behind the Name is undoubtedly my go-to for that, having a reference for meanings and origin isn't always what I need. For more exotic names, as in my sci-fi Wizard of Oz story, I might just translate something specific (like "scarecrow") into languages until I find one I like. I still had trouble deciding between Kaliause (Lithuanian) and Muqevva (altered Azerbajani) in that case, but I eventually chose what sound sort of felt more natural to the character. I feel like that's usually the biggest factor.

On that note, some characters refuse to play nicely when it comes to their names. I very carefully named Martin from Along the Winding Road both because the name started with an M, which matched his brother's name, and because it was derived from Mars—Martin is certainly a bloodlust-type character. Unfortunately he's now quite insistent on being called Milton, which may match the theme naming, but "mill town" isn't exactly the same meaning as before. I can't decide whether I should keep his current name or switch.

There are also place names. I usually break out the good old Google Translate to name my fantasy/sci-fi worlds: for example, "Salynas" is Lithuanian for "archipelago." On the other hand, stories set in real places don't have as much leeway. Still, I love how some of the places for The Long and Winding Road turned out. Hunt was first, as I browsed some Texas summer camps and thought that the one in Hunt sounded like something workable for the background plot. Then I looked for some cities/towns a reasonable distance from Austin (using a used car resale website) until I stumbled upon Killeen. Hunt, kill. Haha. Then a friend noted that the camp I had chosen—Camp Lonehollow—had quite a nice name for a post-apocalyptic story, and I was slightly amazed at how that had turned out.

How do you do your naming? What do you think is the most important factor of a name in fiction?

Time versus Distance

No, not the heading of a graph. This concerns goal-setting in writing.

I can't really say I'm consistent with which kind of goal I'll set (when I do set them). In general, I'll use a time goal because I like to update The Long and Winding Road at least every five days. In actual writing sessions, though, rarely is my goal based on time. On occasions where I just feel uninspired, I may break out my iTunes track of songs of alternating length—one about two minutes, the next longer—and write as much as I can during the shorter songs while resting on the longer ones. I've done something similar with commercial breaks, but I can only manage that when I'm actually interested in the show, which isn't often.

The other goal I'll set is distance, or word count. This is, of course, the way I go about NaNoWriMo, and it's also how I'll use Write or Die (although it is designed to go with either type of goal-setting). In general, I measure my progress by how many words I've churned out, since measuring the time doesn't make that much sense when I'm not being productive for every second of it. I'm necessarily productive for every word I get out (unless everything's ridiculously uninspired or it's too late at night for me to get out anything coherent). It's also easier to know exactly where I'm going on a broader scale, since I like to keep my chapter lengths more or less consistent.

How about you? Time or word count? Or page count? Or something else entirely?

P.S. The Action Girls has for some reason gotten over 100 views this month when the others around it have about 11. I have no idea what's going on with that, but thanks?

Double-Crossed

I have a soft spot for crossover stories. Of course, a lot of this is because of the fan fiction series that I loved writing even if I cringe to actually read it, but the appeal goes farther than that. It even goes farther than the general concept of throwing beloved characters from a generally bright and sunshiny series into various death traps and other trauma.

Really, all writing is crossover writing. I don't mean we're all really fan fiction writers (although an argument could probably be made for that), but we're too far along in time for any work to be wholly its own thing. Brutal is a crossover between Hetalia and The Hunger Games; The Long and Winding Road is a crossover between Hetalia and the zombie apocalypse; the story of Max in prison is a crossover between Macbay Transportation Services and a writing prompt; Portalmancy is a crossover between the ideas of a more literal photogate and the power to telepathically switch door hinges.

Whether it be an entire pre-made universe (such as the real world, if not a published story), a system of magic, a character trait, or or a time period, everything in a story is from somewhere else. The only real creation is crossing things over, finding a complex combination that hasn't quite been laid out in words (or pictures, or maybe notes) before.

That's my take on it, at least. What do you think?

O Thou Font of Every Blessing

While it seems most published stories need to meet certain font requirements, especially in digital publishing, I can't help but search for exactly the font in which I would like to read and write my stories.

A lot of my writing is done in 12-pt Verdana because that's what the FanFiction.Net Document Editor uses. That, of course, only applies to my fan fictions (although it should be noted that that's how I get to see the first and second drafts of The Long and Winding Road). I also use the plain horizontal lines for section breaks.

Along the Winding Road, however, currently appears in 13-pt Bell MT. I'm not sure exactly what about it seems just right for the story—as is the case for most of my fonts—but I do like the number styling in the chapter number-titles (which appear in centred 25-pt). Section breaks are currently formatted with a centred "~*~".

Mayflies is in 11-pt Georgia. This seems like a rather average font, but maybe I'd just like some tinge of normalcy in a story about ancient Mayan bird men and their sorcerer friend. Chapter headings are currently left-aligned, 12-pt, bolded letters (a "J" if Jonathan narrates, or an "M" if Matthew narrates).

Piracy Cruise Lines requires some pretty huge margins for some reason. Text is in 15-pt Garamond. Section breaks have yet to appear, but chapter number-titles are right-aligned, 18-pt, and formatted "---1---."

Dreadful Valley (my NaNoWriMo novel) was written in 12-pt Andalus, with section breaks formatted as plain horizontal lines. There were no chapter titles. I may have just needed a font that worked whether I was writing with my computer in Mac or Windows mode, although I still wouldn't put up with anything too typical, it seems.

Figments is in 12-pt Constantia with right-aligned chapter number-titles at the top of the page.

Chasers appears in 12-pt Candara. Section breaks (modelled somewhat after the Pac-Man dots) are a centred arrangement of three "◌"s. No chapter titles appear.

This blog (when it behaves) is in 12-px Copse, with the title "Novelling with Journey" in 60-px Consolas.

What kind of fonts do you like to us? Do they influence your writing at all?

You Can Almost Taste It

I have a tendency to neglect a lot of senses in my detail writing. That's not to say I do a lot of detail writing—I've even been described as "minimalist" (although not in an insulting way)—but it seems like I really have a tendency to leave out things that aren't seen.

I've read a lot of warnings to this tune in writing blogs, so I don't think it's a unique problem. The vocab most people seem to get in English class is "imagery," which (surprise) concerns detailed images. I've heard alternate definitions where it's expanded to include more sensations, and, while I don't think this is particularly wrong, it doesn't quite fit the word.

In whatever case, I don't think I include enough senses in my stories. I already have a "detail edit" planned for The Long and Winding Road (which I increasingly believe is going to be retitled Along the Winding Road) because, even when I set a goal to include more imagery/soundery/smellery/what have you, I don't do it. I get too involved with writing the plot or dialogue to think about such things. When the characters are eating or, in one case so far, kissing, I'll include smells and such, but aside from that I can't be bothered with it much. I do think that it's an issue, though, thus the plan to work on it in editing.

What kind of sensory details do you put in your stories? What kind do you like to read? How much is too much, or too little?

Also, Post #150! Hooray!

Abandonment Issues

Sometimes ideas go places. Sometimes they go places I don't want them to. And sometimes they just don't go anywhere.

In any case, a lot of stories just aren't going to see the light of day. That's part of the reason I'm sharing so many of my novel ideas—I have little interest in some of them, and some I may just never get to, but I feel like they all deserve a little bit of limelight time just for being nice enough to tap on my shoulder and amuse me for a while.

That being said, not every idea needs to be written. I've yet to find a story that beckons me to write it every moment of every day, but I still need to feel some sort of pull to do any actual writing. Ideas that are just a world without much of a story (as in the first draft of Wanderers), or characters without much of a story (as in Suture), or some such thing just can't draw me much. Even if I like the basic idea, I can't see anything happening in my head if, well, nothing's happening in it. I'm guilty of doing very little plotting before I actually start a story, but I'm fine with winging it if I've at least identified a few points along the journey.

Even if an idea comes with enough of a plot for me to get started, that's still no guarantee the book will be finished. If, for any number of reasons, I lose interest along the way, there's no promise I'm getting it back. I may not find the characters interesting enough to play with, and I would have to go back and change too many things (i.e., do too much work) to get another chapter out. I may start the fic without realising the scope of the story and what I'm getting myself into. I may start a story for the sake of fans rather than my own interest only to crash and burn halfway through. I may just stop caring because of life and time constraints. I have indeed finished a few fan fictions, and I completed NaNoWriMo last year, so I'm not always doomed to give up on my stories. I am somewhat scared by the number of those left incomplete, but I know I'm capable of finishing the writing of a story.

Of course, once the last chapter comes to a close, the story still isn't really finished. I hacked out 50,109 words for my NaNo novel and reached the concluding sentence, so it is in one way complete, but I haven't looked back at the thing since I uploaded my final word count. I don't know if I ever will. I have a certain writer friend who says I should look it over and try to publish it, and another who has browsed it and found it doable, but I'm still not sure. To be honest, I don't even know how I was able to stick with my one awkward idea for an entire fifty thousand words, let alone how I can summon the verve to revise the monster. It is certainly in no condition to be published at present, and I feel it's probably less than half the length it should be for its genre. I don't feel the pull to put that much effort into it. I proved I could finish writing a novel, but I want to go elsewhere to prove I can finish revising a novel. I don't know whether I'll get The Long and Winding Road or Mayflies into publishing condition first, but I am certain that both of them will beat out Dreadful Valley (the NaNo novel).

So, out of some 33 novel ideas to date, only five (The Long and Winding Road, Mayflies, Chasers, Piracy Cruise Lines, and Figments) have made it to the writing phase. Only The Long and Winding Road, Mayflies, and Piracy Cruise Lines are being written currently. Will they all be finished? Will they all be revised and sent off to be published one way or another? I can't say for sure until I've reached that point, but at least The Long and Winding Road and Mayflies are looking pretty good right now. I'll just keep working at it and hoping the muse will hang around where she ought to until I'm done.

The Action Girls

Somehow I got it into my head that I should rank my fighter girls in order of badbuttery. So here we are.

(Spot number one should probably belong to Rin, but her story hasn't been posted yet, so we'll skip over her for now. Ena should also be on here, but she has so little characterisation at this point it's hard to rank her.)

1. Michelle (The Long and Winding Road): She's not a part of the main story, and, at this point, I'm not entirely sure if she'll actually come up in discussions, but I would really like her to. My head-image of her is some sort of cross between Joan Jett and Pat Benatar. While she would qualify as "Most Likely to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse," she somehow seems to have, um, died in it a lot sooner than 5 or 6 on this list. Anyway, she was Emile's fiancee and kicked some serious rear in her time. She has the survival skills and combat skills necessary to get up this high on the list, and the calm and faithful way she handled her upcoming death (although she kind of got burnt alive by paranoid villagers before she could be zombie-fied as she expected) gets her the top spot.
2. Kaliause: Scatterbrained is certainly her normal mode, but thankfully her muscle memory doesn't seem to have been hit by her brain injury. Surviving on her own on a wartorn planet certainly isn't easy, nor is trying to keep Tommy alive when he stumbles across her path, but she handles it with the kind of ease that cements her spot in second place.
3. Loretta May: She may be a city girl, so she's not so experienced with wilderness survival, but she still hasn't had it easy. Surviving an abusive father and a bunch of other experiences with misogynists (although she does tend to think of all men as women-haters), she can handle herself just fine, whether she's executing a flawless robbery or striking and knifing her way out of a dark alleyway.
4. Cerise: A dark mistress of magic, she has to "mask" herself just to prevent her aura from attracting everyone's attention. She may not have skill with weapons, but when she can detonate an area in a snap, why bother tossing knives?
5. Rachel: Up against zombies and vampires alike and still having a blast with it, she plows herself across America with nothing but an RV and a good attitude. And a gun (which is why she's a bit lower than some of the close-combat users) and some friends, of course.
6. Charlotte: While her older brother and a few kindhearted villagers may be how she got through the worst part of the apocalypse, by the beginning of her story, she can hold her own against zombies and humans alike. A bit handicapped in total wilderness survival but an expert in scrounging through the remains of civilized areas, she's been through a lot but has come out rather bright and cheery. She's also very goal-driven, and not too terrible a shot.
7. Andromache: Although she could easily be called a pampered princess, that hasn't stopped her from getting a feel for the soldier's life. She may not be that tough physically, but she's got a good handle on magic and more than enough heart and loyalty to make up for it. She will be knocked down, but she will get back up.
8. Darla: Fearless in battle (perhaps not so much with real life), she can take a hit and deal one, too. She's not so hot once she's swordless, but she'll find a way to get her (or her opponent's) weapon back, and she's not afraid to take a few wounds in the meantime.
9. Pink: With a determination that can rip up mountains and cast them into the sea, she will not stop or take a detour. She's an average fighter and hasn't much experience with weapons, but she can run like nobody's business and, in her story, that's the only physical strength she really needs.
10. Scarlet: Fierce and proud, she'll whatever she has to to help her loved ones, even if that means bristling under the enemy's control until she can find a way out. She's not very tough physically, but she can figure out how to put a Cyber suit to good use, and she's not afraid to do so, either.
11. Michelle (Crime or Punishment): She may be quiet and a drug addict, but she's still a trained policewoman in an urban area, and she will kick rear by hand, gun, or nightstick. Only her fluctuating mental status keeps her down on the list.
12. Danielle: She's been trained as an assassin from a young age and can handle her job. Unfortunately, her story gets around to breaking her down more than 11.
13. Vanessa: She may be young and untrained, but she has a killer instinct and a pretty good trigger finger. Beware all who challenge her.
14. Athena: Being cast out from civilization, she's tough and knows how to survive. She's combative to a fault, but she'll still expend some of her strength to lend a hand.
15. Kori: A bit paranoid and bewildered, but she can use her brain, and she has excellent endurance. The whole bit about launching her corrosive blood at others or at inhuman barriers doesn't hurt her status.
16. M: She really has no idea what's going on, and she's not in terribly good condition physically. She does, however, have an astounding magical ability that only continues to grow stronger, along with her will, in the course of her story.
17. Josephine: She's rather frail and too lost to be very determined, but she's a swift runner and can be surprisingly strong when it comes to helping her allies. 
18. Helen: More stubborn than determined, she still has guts and isn't afraid to chuck a stiletto heel hard at somebody.
19. Sophia: Although she's a bit timid at the beginning of her story, she still develops and is fiercely devoted to her friends and getting them out of the cage alongside her.

A Very Good Place To Start

Story beginnings are an art form all their own. They have to ensnare the reader, set the tone, make promises about the whole story, and start building connections between the reader and the characters. Tall order, right?

Well, since one of the worst things in the world is a blank document with a line blinking mockingly at me, I have to get something out to start, whether it's the best line/spot to open or not. The perfect opening can wait until revision.

That's not to say I don't try to make the opening interesting and relevant in the first draft. In my serially-published fan fictions, I don't even have the chance to write the entire story and then edit it before posting. I just start.

Here are a few of my beginnings to compare:

"Holding her breath, Charlotte carefully aimed her rifle. The surest shot was right through the sorry creature's brain. That way, it couldn't even survive long enough to notice and attack her. So, she stayed quiet, watched the motion of its head, and...

With a sharp bang, her gun spat out its bullet, and the bit of metal buried itself in the creature's grey-green forehead. The monster fell to the ground dead long before the buzz faded from Charlotte's ears." 

— The Long and Winding Road (original version)

"I just manage to get the door closed behind me before I can be impaled by a rapier."

—Piracy Cruise Lines

"She awoke with asphalt grating her back. No warm light touched her face, and a look straight ahead to the sky confirmed the sun wasn’t out. Nor were any clouds, nor were stars. Only a vast black canvas hung above her.

Something seemed off about that."

—Chasers

"'Can you see anyone over there?' my brother starts, voice even more hushed than usual.

Taking a step onto the white path, I cringe as gravel scratches the blisters on my feet. As if standing on a sign of civilization wasn’t bad enough in itself. I do get a better view of the field from here, though. Maize in neat rows, dipping in the breeze, beckoning poor, starving souls towards them."

—Mayflies

As far as Dead Man's Hand goes, I felt like starting with the quote "Adrian had come to the conclusion that Nietzsche must have been a complete sociopath." But that would open the story with nothing but a while of reflection, and I know that I'm prone to putting the book down after a few paragraphs of that. Instead, I think I may start with Adrian procuring one of his cards for the round.

What kind of openings do you like? How long will you go on reading before you decide whether the book is worth continuing or not?

They Say Three is a Magic Number

I've posted my first and second attempts at a cover for The Long and Winding Road; now here's my third (drawing heavily from the second, of course).

I changed the background to another photo by the same artist, but I had to add my own fog with different gradient styles, so I'm a bit unsure about that. It's much easier to see the title with this, although most attempts to place my name interfere with the most winding part of the road. I'd kind of like to figure out a way to put my name in two lines on, say, the bottom right side, but I don't know what I would use to balance it out. Currently, my best idea is wedging it between the arms over the straight section of the road.

I tried to go ahead and tone down the flesh colours a bit, but it really didn't look good. This photo does have more colour to it, though, so hopefully the contrast is less overwhelming. If not, I may just have to redo all of the colouring on the arms, which would not be particularly fun.

I fixed Charlotte's index fingernail and smoothed out some of the outline bumps. I think I might need to blur the texture on Arthur's (the front) hand a bit, since it stands out a lot more than that on Charlotte's.

I'm also considering changing the title again. I unfortunately fell in love with As We Wind on Down the Road, but since those are lyrics from a song instead of the title, I would have to deal with copyright, and I don't foresee much success in that endeavour. It's a shame, since I think Arthur could easily be a big Led Zeppelin fan. I may go with the earlier-suggested Along the Winding Road, although I'm not sure how I should divide that into lines for the cover. It all depends on whether any songs actually play a role in the story.

Feedback is always appreciated.

Cover Me

Some of you may have viewed my first attempt at making a cover for The Long and Winding Road. For those interested, here is my second.

I'm not entirely sure if it will be usable in publishing, since the background is from a wonderful stock photo artist on dA. While I had been envisioning a much more, er, winding road, this picture really has a good feel to it, and I wanted something symmetrical with the hand design in front. I'll still try to find somewhere to take my own picture, but I doubt I'll be able to do as well.

The hands are mine, although I did start by tracing a how-to guide on them. Charlotte's nails are my own addition, which explains why they need more adjusting. I tried to add a little texture, though I'm not sure how well it really turned out. The main difficulty was the outlines. I did my shabby tracing, then the colouring, then the same-color outlines, all in an attempt to make it less cartoony. It's still far from realistic, but I like the effect. Of course, I'll have to redo it if I decide Arthur is white after all (he's currently Chinese with a little bit of Korean and Caucasian). We'll see.

I might make the title bigger, although I like the effect (Hooray for SumoPaint layers!). It goes well with this background, at least. I was originally going to do black letters with a white glow, but then I stumbled upon this effect. The lettering worked well enough for me to stop font-surfing at the "B"s, but if anyone has an idea that might look better for a post-apocalyptic romance, let me know.

I'm planning to have my name centred, same font and effect but smaller than the title, about where the fog comes in on the road. I really don't mind the cover without it, but that probably wouldn't help get my name out there.

Then again, eBook covers really aren't seen as much as "real" book covers. I have to look at a solid book cover every time I go for the book, but 'tis not so in digital publishing (at least, not for the Nook). I just need to snag some attention and hope the writing is worth looking back at the description for my name.

So, better than my last cover? Worse? About the same considering the different styles? Any other photos of the same style you know I could use?

Untitled (Except It Is)

What kind of titles do you like?

As some of you know, I've been toying with the title of The Long and Winding Road. Since the original-fiction version doesn't have the love interest as such a big Beatles fan, the title doesn't seem as relevant. At the same time, I don't know what the alternative could be. I tried just The Winding Road, but it didn't seem to fit, and I really have no other ideas.

I'm not good at with chapter titles, either. I do my best to come up with them for fanfiction.net, and I've carried some of them over to the repost on deviantArt, but I don't know about using them in actual stories. I don't feel like they're necessary, beyond a number. At fanfiction.net, it's nice to remember where you last read, which is difficult with only numbered chapters. In published books, though, there are bookmarks, either physical or digital. Given I'm not brilliant at chapter titles (I either steal them from song lyrics, a word from within the chapter, or just something that may or may not fit well), I don't want to try them unless I have reason to think they're necessary.

I feel like my title ideas are terribly unoriginal. Granted, the fewer the words used, the more often they're used—that's just a matter of statistics. I just want to feel like my titles jump out at people, somehow. How much does that sort of thing vary between readers?

Also, my titles tend to be extremely short, on top of generic. Run a Google search for "Brutal" and you're probably never going to find the fan fiction. The same goes for The Rules, even if it's a lot more popular. Are there any sorts of resources for title generation, or is it just something I have to practise until it works?

A Pearl Worth Writing For

Recently I've finally come to realize that (shocker) if I don't enjoy writing a story, it's really not worth the loads of time and effort I put into it.

This is an unfortunate realization for the readers of Break Out. I've really only been writing it for the readers. I had my fun in The Rules, but Break Out was the more seriously-taken sequel to explain why I was able to have my fun in The Rules. Negligible amounts of my own interest went into deciding to write the sequel. The chapter with France finding Canada wanted to be written, as did the chapter with Italy taking an unexpected turn (which was originally going to be in The Rules, anyway). That's it. I haven't plotted enough to know what happens at the point I've reached, and I've realized I don't really care anymore. I've only been writing my 2,500 words every four days for the readers' sake, and so few showed much interest the last chapter posted (until recently) that I just gave up on it.

I'm not promising I'll never go back to it. If it becomes of interest to me, or if I have a lot of extra time and pushy readers, I'm sure I'd be fine with writing some more. I already have the "normal" amount of reviews for the last chapter, so I'm not feeling quite so abandoned. It's difficult trying to balance what I want to do with what I should do for readers, but I've chatted with a good handful of friends (and my mother), and they've agreed that I just shouldn't write it if I don't want to—it's my hobby, for veal's sake. (If I do give on forever on Break Out, I'll at least post a summary of what was supposed to happen next, so no need to panic too much.)

At the same time, I hope I don't end up doing this with all of my original fictions. The Long and Winding Road is getting few enough reviews that I can be sure I'm not just writing it for the readers, and I'm not seriously thinking that I might lose interest in it. As for my other (future) fictions, at this point I don't know. I'm worried that I'll find myself losing interest in things and losing my discipline in the process. Hopefully that's just another unfounded accusation I'm making at myself, but I guess only time will tell. If nothing else, I've powered through all 50,000 words of NaNoWriMo with a fiction I was at no point proud to call my own.

What do you think? Any advice for me? Have you ever been in this sort of situation? What do you think makes writing worth it?

(Also, if the title sounds somehow familiar but you can't quite place it, here's your hint. I also mean "pearl" in the metaphorical sense, though hopefully that's not difficult to figure out.)

Pitchapalooza 3

Pitchapalooza startled and awed audiences with its possibilities.

Pitchapalooza 2 pushed audiences further, with Journey-acclaimed critics calling it awesome and exciting.

And now the release of Pitchapalooza 3 is ready to stun the viewers further...

...until it completely bombs at the box office and turns out to be worthless to pretty much everyone involved.

And so it seems that my novel pitch is not among those the Book Doctors selected. Ah, well. It wasn't as if I thought winning it—let alone being chosen randomly—was that realistic.

That was still the best odds I could possibly have of getting an agent, but oh, well. Self-publishing digitally it is!

Once I actually finish the story. And maybe after redoing the cover, although I need practice drawing people holding hands for my current idea...

The Thing About Fan Fiction…

...is that it has no hope of being published. Aside from my usual phases of panic that everything I write is rubbish and would never sell, the writing that consumes almost all of my time is absolutely unsellable due to copyright.

If my goal is to get published, then it seems logical that I should spend more time on publishable writing than fan fiction. Certainly I'm not about to stop updating Break Out or The Long and Winding Road, but updating as quickly as I feel the need to takes up time I could be using more productively towards getting published. I do feel like any writing is a good way to get experience, but just look at my other posts—I have tons of original fiction ideas to toy with. Still, fan fiction has the benefit of attracting attention while in-progress, so I don't have to wait until I'm done to get feedback on my writing.

Fan fiction is a different beast than original fiction, as I've very much come to consider in the process of converting The Long and Winding Road from one to the other. Even if they do share a lot of elements, there are also quite a few differences, so the experience I get from fan fiction isn't 100% going towards what I could use in original fiction.

Basically, it just comes down to how productive I want to be. More original fiction time = less fan fiction time. I do want to have fun, though it seems a little weird for fan fiction to be my inception-hobby with writing as my hobby and something else altogether as my occupation. It's a weird balancing act that I'm definitely going to have to shift if I want to make progress on publishable original fiction.

I'm not sure just how or how much I'm going to wean myself off of fan fiction. I hate to disappoint readers, so I don't expect to change any habits as far as already-published (on fanfiction.net) works go, but I feel like I might shift to a slower-updating existence once the second of my big series is over.

Does anyone else have experience with or tips for this?

Pitchapalooza: The Sequel, in Amazing 3-D!

Well, I've gone on ahead and written up a pitch for The Winding Road. I'm sort of unsatisfied with that title now that I've thought about it more, though, so I refer to it as The Long and Winding Road in the pitch. If anyone has other fitting title ideas, feel free to (read: please do) let me know. Also feel free to critique this first draft of the pitch.

Clocking in at 239 of 250 allowed words, we have:

The zombie apocalypse was years ago—old hat. Besides, there’s a cure and plenty of bullets yet to take care of the rotting stragglers.

No, the threats these days are the survivors.

Charlotte Heiman has finally achieved a stable life in the walled remains of Killeen as a zombie hunter, but she can’t stay any longer. She hasn’t seen her little brother Blake since her family dropped him off at camp that fateful summer, and now that she has the supplies, she’s headed his way.

Arthur Deering has finally achieved a stable life in a rural home with no companions but his bow and arrows. He has long since come to believe that he’s the only man alive—so it comes as quite a shock when Charlotte finds him. Quite an infatuating shock, as a matter of fact.

Although Arthur turns out to be much more of a suitor than a menace, he’s not the only survivor Charlotte meets. It’s a long walk to Hunt, filled with those who lost everything and aren’t afraid to take whatever they can. It will take both Charlotte and Arthur to get past survivors that threaten to take their supplies, bodies, and lives.

A tale of the numbness and the hope humans can achieve in the aftermath of atrocity, The Long and Winding Road will appeal to all post-apocalyptic romance lovers from the realm of The Hunger Games to that of Warm Bodies.

The Scribes

I'm a part of my institution's writing club, the Scribes. It's not always particularly structured, but it's a lot of fun. Usually we start with a round of introductions, with one random fact (last time, it was favourite poem or song lyrics) since the same people don't tend to show up for every meeting.

From there, we can branch out anywhere. Most times we include an open session to just share ideas—I've put Macbay Transportation Services out there to get the idea an actual war is starting up aside from all of the empire stuff—but it's also neat to see what some of the others are doing. One girl just asked for help with one point of the plot she couldn't get past, and, while I wasn't useful at all in that one, I think we as a group helped a lot.

The idea-sharing is actually where I got the idea for The Long and Winding Road. One boy (I don't know why I'm referring to all of the members as children) decided to sort of jump on the zombie bandwagon, but to him it's not horror if it's not cannibalism, so he threw the idea at us that eating zombie flesh is the cure for zombieism. Another boy ran off with that and started a beautiful comedic idea for something set a while past the apocalypse featuring a zombie restaurant. My focus has kind of slipped away from the original, but I got both of the boys' permission and started up that fiction.

Aside from that, we do a lot of funny writing exercises. Some involve coming up with a plot when given a title. We get about five minutes and then share with the others. Invariably someone will come up with something involving either the Mafia or the total breakdown of society (apparently we might be anarchists). We've done one where we're given a plot and had to come up with the cast (or at least one character).

This week's exercise is the first time we've been given "homework," just because we ran out of time at the meeting. We all had to come up with two "themes" (we used that term quite loosely, as you will see), a setting, and a main character. We then randomly picked a character, a setting, and two themes, and we need to have a rough idea of the storyline by next week. I ended up having to write a 20-year-old female university student moonlighting as a sports team mascot, set in sixth-century Constantinople, with themes of revenge and flying time monkeys.

If nothing else, it's going to be interesting.