Christie Yant

I am waaaay behind on my posting on both blogs. 

So, hi there.  How's the writing going?

What, mine?  Not so much.  I'm still researching.  I have immersed myself in a world that I find totally weird, creepy, and fascinating, and am hoping to have acheived a reasonable saturation point by October 31.  I have my protagonist pretty well formed already, which is kind of exciting, because I rarely have much in the way of depth for my characters until I'm half-way done with a story.  Antagonist is still a bit up in the air, though.  I think it'll come.

I'm getting excited about NaNoWriMo.  I stopped by the site the other night to find that my registration from October 1 had disappeared completely — anyone else have that problem?  But no big deal, I just reregistered, set up my region, and customized my forums, (I'm writing sci-fi this year, so I'll be sticking with that one and the general forums.) So far it looks like I'm the only person in my town participating — not surprising, really, since in the past I've done a lot of cheerleading to get people involved and this year I haven't done that.  I probably won't drive south to the next nearest registered region to attend any write-ins.  So it'll just be me and my lappy, doing our best to bang out a novel. 

I've been watching some of the writers I follow on Twitter as they finish stories or outlines or push through tough scenes.  It's a good reminder, something to have in my face daily, that people are out there producing words and finishing things.  I am not right now, still, and I'm feeling pretty okay about that.  Have you ever felt like you were incubating a story?  That's how I feel right now.  And it's just the *one* story — well, that's not totally true, I've had ideas for a lot of related off-shoots of the central novel idea, but I don't feel like pursuing them right now would serve the novel. 

The website is coming along.  I'm happy with what I've got done so far, and I think it'll go live in time. 

Also, I just learned two days ago that today is 24 Hour Comics Day, which I had somehow never heard of.  I may have to participate next year, it sounds awesome and it turns out that my tiny town has a comics/game store that is likely to support something like that.  For those of you participating this year, good luck and Make Good Art!

From his blog:

More soon!

It's that time of year again.  The sun goes down a little earlier, drug store aisles are filled with cheap Halloween costumes and candy, the break room at work is filled with people's surplus tomatoes and zuccini, and the Spiced Pumpkin Latte is back at Starbucks. You know what that means. That's right: it's noveling season. 

Registration for National Novel Writing Month is open. The site looks great, and I didn't notice any lag issues at all when I registered last night. The best news is that October 31 is a Friday this year, so we can start at 12:00:01 on Saturday morning and get a solid head start without worrying about having to get up and go to work. A good sprint early on can make all the difference during the dreaded Week Two Doldrums.

This will be my fifth NaNoWriMo. I mentioned before that I failed miserably the past two years, something I don't intend to repeat this year.  The thing is… I don't have a plan this year.  I have no idea what I'm going to write. My two previous 'wins' were outlined, note-carded, fully populated worlds, and I just don't have a story in my head to do all of that around right now. Since this year I'm all about trying new things to see what works, I'm thinking I might just do a tiny bit of world building, create a couple of characters, completely ignore things like plot in my planning, and see what comes out when I start typing on November 1. 

This gives me a hard date by which to have the new website up.  NaNo will take up all of my spare cycles (I will also still be in school, it's Election season, and we're hosting Thanksgiving for my extended family for the first time in my life) so if the website isn't done by the end of October then it won't be until the end of the year. 

I hit a little snag in the website development, in that I basically had to scrap a very well-formed plan and start over last week — but I got most of it sorted out today and I'm back on track.  I am excited about it. 

The only actual writing I've done recently (apart from blog posts) has been to add a few words to that story on my phone. Strangely, I do not feel like a complete loser for taking this hiatus.  I hope that the end result will be renewed vigor and enthusiasm for storytelling, just in time to crank out a novel.