Skip to main content

NaNoWriMo in Full Swing...

Happy mid-November to all!

As we near the mid point of the month, I'm nearing the mid-point of my NaNo goals. It's been a steady and uphill climb, some days a slog, some days an energized run. But I've been doing a great job of sitting down to write every day.

Can't fix it if it ain't on paper.

On the subject of 'fixing', I've been speaking with other authors lately about the subject of Style. The Chicago Manual of Style has come up time and again and it looks like that's where I'm going to turn my attention to first.

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html

I love telling stories. I love building worlds and sending characters through them. This is my RPG background shining through. However, RPG-ing entails a much more verbal interplay rather than written prose and that is where I tend to falter.

Something like a good race driver who knows little about the mechanics of the car.

Well, I've gone in. I signed up for a 30-day free trial and am reading through the sections noted as 1: Books and Journals. If I'm gong to drive this thing, I'm going to know how to change the oil! At the ripe old age of... greybeard status, I have enough wisdom to know that I will not absorb and master every single element of each specific technique, but I'll come out of this thing as a better author than when I went in.

See ya on the other side!

-Dave

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Schools out!

The summer vacation season is in bloom! Kids everywhere! Good thing I like to write at 5 a.m. Mmmmmmm coffee. I'm hamming away on Book II of the series. It's coming together nicely. We've had a murder and our good hero has entrenched himself deeply into the local wizard politics. 6000+ words this week! Such a weird juxtaposition when most of my day involves Pokemon cards, Legos, and bike rides. This might be the year my family enters the world of RPGs. Yah, this blurb was short and sweet, but I've got to get back to the shores of Lake Superior! -Dave

Speaking of the In-between

Only knocked out 3000 words this week... But it was one of those 'top 10 best writing weeks' kind of week. A plot-a-licious plot-y plot-plot-plot kind of week. Last month, I wrote a short story that links the antagonists of Greenshores' Book I to Book II. This past week detailed the First Act arc in a second short story, allowing me to plum the depths of the antagonists even further than the general plotting allowed. Sure, I've got the characters detailed out and all of that. I've got Act I all mapped out in a chapter-by-chapter checklist. However, to do the 'walk a mile in their shoes' thing via a short story brings new expanses to the character (as well as some nifty plot devices that will further strengthen Book II and the act's overall arc. I should elaborate on something. At the heart of Book II is a straight-forward murder mystery. This is a new genre for me. Sort of. I grew up on Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christy. My rainy Sundays usual

Well... It's got "Green" in the title...

Hi all. Well, today I shot out another book to a contest Blockgarten: Gaam's Green Valley This little ditty is a very weird fiction work. It was kicked off back in 2015 during a particularly nasty oil change. Yah, you read that correctly. Okay, story time: It was early Spring, after the thaws. Probably around the month of March. It was overcast, cold, wet, and my sinuses were closed for business. It was early and there had been very little coffee (like, NONE) in my life at that time, due to fasting for a blood draw. I had settled into a nasty mood for a nasty day. So I'm sitting in the waiting room with my iPad in hand. To further embrace the moment, I decided to go full-on gloom and doom: I began browsing through Lovecraft works. The browsing took me into the history of the Lovecraft properties (apparently there are three broad definitions of them: those works that H.P. wanted to give to the world to inspire other authors via family, later works own