Let’s Catch Up, Shall We?!

Posted on January 23, 2012 by K. L. Kerr

Greetings! Pull up a chair. Oh, you’re already sitting down. Never mind, then.

Right, so I was going to go into this huge spiel about how pathetic and depressing 2011 was for me, and to share with anyone who cares to read it about how awful things were and how badly I handled everything and how I dropped myself into whole oceans worth of shit.

But you know what? No one will want to hear about it, and I don’t particularly want to write about it or even remember it, so fuck it, I won’t.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the good things I have to look forward to in 2012.

So I finished the novel I was working on for NaNoWriMo 2011. Woo. It is out with more beta readers as we speak, and I am sitting on my hands while I wait to hear back from them, chewing the skin around my nails like a rabid rodent.

I fully, fully intend to have this book released for public consumption by the middle/back-end of this year. The thing and/or problem with this particular book is that it’s been around in some form or another for a looooooong time now, and yet I feel I can’t move onto bigger, better things until I’m happy that the foundation I’ve created is solid. So the first book is winging its way back through beta readers and hopefully a variety of opinions will be winging their way to me very soon!

That said, I’ve started editing the second book, still (currently) titled “The Vampire’s Son”, my 2009 NaNoWriMo, which basically looks like a kneaded turd right now.

No, that’s not fair. The parts that are done are pretty decent, in all fairness. But then there are g a p i n g chasms where whole chapters should be, frayed and unfinished scenes, entire plot threads have unravelled and dangle loose, with the threat of the slightest breeze blowing them away. So it looks more like a moth-eaten blanket found buried in the basement, covered in dust and dead spiders.

But it’s definitely workable, and what’s there is good, if I do say so myself.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at with writing right now.

I’ve stopped playing World of Warcraft for an indefinite period, simply because when I do play, it takes over my entire life, and I actually have other things I’m supposed to be doing.

I love the game, and by playing it I’ve managed to meet people who I can say with some degree of confidence I would never have met otherwise. But I just don’t have the time for it. I only hope that soon I will get the time to be able to return to GlenCoco, my Worgen warrior, and get back to those heady nights of drunk tanking and getting everyone killed.

Even without WoW, I’m still managing to get in a fair amount of procrastination, though – if I do say so myself – it’s not as much as this time last year. I’d like to think it might be in part because of the wake up call that 2011 actually was.

I’m blaming NetFlix for the new bout of mind wandering, since that’s just been released in the UK, and of course I had to sign up for the free month.

Anyway, that’s where I am with everything else right now.

I have some plans/announcements that I’m going to be bursting out in the next few days/weeks for the VS series, so keep your lids peeled for that.

I plan to get back into the swing of updating this site as well, since it seems a little forlorn and filled with melancholy right now. I have a number of “Music to Write Novels By” posts still waiting in the wings, so I should be able to ease myself back in with a few of those.

Onwards and upwards, people!

2012 is the year!

In the Word Cloud This Year #nanowrimo

Posted on November 24, 2011 by K. L. Kerr

So the end of NaNoWriMo 2011 looms.

Am I on target? No.

Shitteth has hitteth the fan…eth. Oh it’s all going on like party central over here right now.

I am still managing to sit down and force some stuff out, hence the not-entirely-pitiful word count so far.

Do I think I’ll be able to get to 50,000 words by the 30th? I should hope so.

I don’t have any other major events happening between now and then, so if I stick to it (and, according to the NaNo estimator thingy, churn out 2,087 words instead of the 1,667 starting estimate), I should be OK.

Out of curiosity, I also entered the current word dump into Wordle. Here’s the outlook so far:

So it’s pretty much the same as last year’s, all full of people “thinking” “back” to their “eyes”. I also like…the word ‘like’…a lot, apparently. I like ‘like’ a lot.

In other news, I have a Kindle now. T’was a very early Christmas/birthday gift.

I’ll be honest, I’m surprised I got this far without buying one myself.

I have already bought more books than I can likely ever get through (or even afford right now, but that’s a whole other, far less light-hearted story), and I have high hopes for it.

P.S. No, that’s not a crack. It’s a cat hair. Damn things get EVERYWHERE.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Back to it!

Ready to Rock #NaNoWriMo 2011?

Posted on October 31, 2011 by K. L. Kerr

Alright, so NaNoWriMo kind of crept up on me this year. With everything else that’s been going on in my life, it’s like “who the fuck cares about a little writing competition?! You have real life shit to worry about, woman”. But then I realise that I’ve been in this limbo since September, and while I’ve gone nowhere, be it personally or creatively, the world has continued to turn. Like a recent fortune cookie said to me: “Time waits for no man”.

Continue reading →

A Very Belated New Year!

Posted on February 10, 2011 by K. L. Kerr

I considered making a new year’s resolution post towards the end of December.

In my experience, New Year’s Resolutions aren’t meant to be kept, so that when you make them, you end up feeling sad and confused, not to mention disappointed in your own shortcomings, being completely unable to keep to those simple goals you set yourself some twelve months earlier.

So I didn’t bother.

I was also infected with a nasty flu virus over Christmas (so bad that I spent Christmas day alone (if you don’t include the cats, who are blinded by what I don’t quite think is love because cats are incapable of love, but at the very least appreciation for the hand that feeds them), because I couldn’t get out to see any family and they all live too far away to come to me (and i didn’t want them there, in any case, what with me being a raised flu zombie), in bed, watching horrible Christmas television on ITV, because the remote was broken and I seriously did not have enough energy to get up and change the channel by hand.

Oh, and just as a by-the-by: Polar Express? Massive pile of shit film.

But anyway. Since I wasn’t much better by New Year’s, I was in no state to be making dream-filled plans for the following 365 fun-filled days. And since I’ve very slowly spent the majority of my time since then getting better while re-integrating into work life, I never got around to making any.

Looking back, I kind of wished I had forced myself to, as now we’re over a month into another year, and I am stuck doing my usual floundering about the amount of things I want to do, but either out of sheer laziness or just life in general elbowing its way into my time, I have done very little. At least if I had made some kind of goals, I would’ve had something to mock myself for having not done, something for my inner life-coach (Don’t you have one of those? Mine’s called Cybil) to yell at me to do.

In any case, it’s done (or — in this case — not done) now, so now I bring you my very belated New Year’s Resolutions:

I will save a good portion of my wage from now on to put towards the San Diego Comic Con trip in July. This isn’t so much a resolution as much as something I have no choice but to do. If I don’t have enough money, I’m not going to be able to go. And since we have tickets (hell yeah!), we have to go.
I will either finish the first draft of Divided They Fall or I will finish the umpteenth draft of The Vampire’s Son. This is an either-or; I am not giving myself the added pressure of finishing them both (though it would of course be very nice!) If I am still working on one of these by November, I will make my NaNoWriMo 2011 project on their respective completion. Failing to complete either of these by the end of November, I will release “Jeremy” to the general public, which is around 99% finished. I am not allowing myself to bring work on The Servant or Blood of Ages (the fourth and fifth book, respectively), until any of the above criteria are filled.
I normally put in a resolution about eating more healthily or doing more exercise (More? I mean any.), but now it’s getting to the stage that I really have to start looking at this as a serious subject. I might go into this in more detail one day, when I want to put you off your lunch, but essentially my body is a mess — almost entirely self-inflicted — and at twenty seven, if I don’t do something to fix it now, there might come a time when I’m not able to at all.

Wow, that’s a bit of a downer to end on, isn’t it?

Here’s some Jazz Tenticles to lighten the mood.

There we go. Feel much better now.

I Fell off the Earth!

Posted on December 17, 2010 by K. L. Kerr

No, I didn’t.

Ha! Tricked you!

Anyway.

So, yes, it’s been pretty quiet in the world of Kat the last two weeks. Since NaNoWriMo ended, I have been wandering the proverbial streets, wondering where and when inspiration will return, open-armed, telling me it didn’t mean to leave but that life just took us down different paths. Or something.

I still have an incomplete third draft of Divided They Fall. It lingers in shadows, watching me. Judging me.

Why haven’t you finished me yet? it demands. More important things to do, have we? Have World of Warcraft Cataclysm to play, do we?

In any case, I am still working on it, albeit much more slowly now that there is less pressure imposed upon me from the world at large to write that damn novel. It’s harder to keep driving along when you are the only one telling yourself to finish it.

But I am still on it. Honest.

As a bonus, here’s a picture of my new worgen druid, Penrefe, and a double feature with my worgen warrior, Glencoco (you go, Glen Coco!), both of which I am loving alongside my now level 83 worgen hunter (I race-changed her; I’m not that quick), Catirina.

Being addicted to World of Warcraft Cataclysm is like being addicted to crack: You know it’s going to destroy you, but you can’t resist the buzz you get for doing it.

If you play World of Warcraft and would like to join me and our awesome guild of awesome, come join us! We currently play ‘For the Alliance’ on Mazrigos EU server. Join us at TheNuGen.co.uk

#NaNoWriMo Word Cloud

Posted on December 5, 2010 by K. L. Kerr

Using the delightful Wordle app, here’s what my NaNoWriMo draft has to say for itself so far:

Turns out I like a lot of looking and turning, as I predicted, as well as a lot of people “still” wanting to “just” to something, a lot of “little” “moments”, and every other superfluous and unnecessary word you can think of. It would also appear that Catrina isn’t the main character in this story. Devaux is.

I’m looking forward to comparing the completed draft with this cloud, and indeed later drafts, in order to see whether I’m improving or regressing.

Congratulations!

Posted on November 30, 2010 by K. L. Kerr

Just wanted to pass on my congratulations to those who have succeeded in their NaNoWriMo task this year, and to commiserate those who have not quite met the challenge, whether through their own faults, or simply through life getting in the way.

The important thing is that we should be there for each other…now, and in the future.

With that said, a pat on the back for all, who succeeded, and a reminder that your attempts – regardless of their outcomes — were valiant, to say the least.

Enjoy December!

For many, this journey is not over yet.

This is the End of My #NaNoWriMo

Posted on November 26, 2010 by K. L. Kerr

I was hoping to save this epic song for the day I finally finished my entire first series, but considering the amount of time it’s taken me just to get this far, by the time the day comes I finally send the first series out to pasture, music itself (along with the Internet, fast food, and possibly mankind in general) will have become obsolete, and we’ll all be living in suspended animation, stored in pods on the moon.

So, yes, this is it, the end of another NaNoWriMo; hope you had a creative November, because that’s it for another year!

My spelling has suffered significantly throughout the course of this ordeal, which is of course excusable, with the advent of Spell Checkers, no doubt when I’m finished I can just sweep it under the rug in one fell swoop. What the Spellcheck doesn’t check for is sheer moronic stupidity, of course, where you put completely inappropriate and yet correctly-spelled words into the fray. See my previous example of the man who was sticky. I’m starting to think that the person who designed the layout of the modern computer keyboard was a bit of a sadist.

It doesn’t help that the T is so close to the Y, and it’s so easy to write Slaters instead of Slayers, leaving the impression running around in my mind that there’s an army of Saved by the Bell’s AC Slater clones running around killing vampires willy nilly. That did cut off my creative flow whenever I spelled it wrong, after I’d stopped pissing my pants with laughter, of course. It’s the little things that keep you going, after all.

Overall, I’ve had a similar experience this year to what I had the year previous. I managed with only occasional, mild discomfort to throw out the daily word count, but as with last year’s attempt, the novel itself is not finished.

But let’s talk about that later. First, let’s see how I did!

So yeah, there we go. Fifty thousand words in thirty days. Whether or not you see this as overly impressive will greatly depend on your own writing ability. My family right now think I’m about as brilliant as a really brilliant thing, just for trying to do this, let alone for actually finishing.

And there we go, 50k, written slowly and consistency (more or less) for 30 days (give or take, considering I have actually finished early, although in fairness to me, up until literally last Wednesday, I did think it ended today, so…). Not really much more to say on all that except…woo.

You’d be forgiven for thinking I’m not exactly jumping 15ft in the air in ecstasy at the prospect of having done all this writing, and you’d be right, and earn yourself a shiny make-believe medal for your intuitiveness.

I’m very glad I did it, of course. It’s been very quiet for a good ten or more months prior to this exercise, where I did almost nothing writing-related, which — varying degrees of excuses aside — just wasn’t on. So I am grateful for the timing of this opportunity to jump back into it, and again this year the online writing communities have made it easier to gel back into the creative process.

But I’m now in a position of ‘What Do I Do Now?’. I haven’t finished the novel itself yet, not by quite a way, if the outline can be adhered to. If I am to finish it ever, I will need to continue writing after others have stopped. I suspect the story will end around 80 – 90k, so essentially, I need another month of putting out the same numbers.

Anyway, that’s enough complaining. I still did it, and I’m giving myself a fat slap on the back for the effort. The important thing is I’m back into the swing of the whole writing thing right now, and that’s a big…no, massive…no, gargantuan improvement, and one that I can’t be thankful enough for.

Bring it on, December! I’m ready to go another round!

How are all you Wrimos getting on with your words? Have you reached your goal, and have you told all the story you wanted to in the word count? Best of luck in these last remaining days!

Looking for a Caucasian Male, Tall and Sticky. #NaNoWriMo is Ending.

Posted on November 24, 2010 by K. L. Kerr

The end is in sight for another year of NaNoWriMo. I’m only around 1 day behind on my word count, although I somehow managed to confuse myself (it’s not hard) into thinking that NaNo this year ended on a Sunday (a conclusion I reached with some confidence because November started on a Monday…yes, I know, I’m an idiot), so I have two extra days I didn’t realise I had. I thought this weekend would be the big rush (which it inevitably still will be), but aparently I have a longer failsafe.

So, this time next week, we’ll be in December, the festive month of Christmas (or Winterval, if we’re being abhorrently PC about the names of Britain’s festivities — I call it Christmas, and I don’t even like Christmas all that much), I will (hopefully) have a 50,000+ word Scrivener document, albeit with a hefty chunk of remaining scenes to write, although on the upside, I do have those scenes outlined, so I know what I’m doing, it’s going to be a case of maintaining the drive to continue drilling out a couple of hundred words a day until it’s finished.

Which I might not do, but anyway, moving on!

So it occured to me that thus far I haven’t come across anything hilariously bad in re-reading. That may well be that I haven’t actually done any re-reading of it yet, but that’s not the reason I bring it up. The reason I bring it up is because I did find this wonderful little typo, which I couldn’t resist sharing.

The line should’ve been:

The man was blonde, tall and stocky, with broad shoulders…

The line actually read:

The man was blonde, tall and sticky…

It’s best to remember that all this writing lark — regardless of whether or not you do it ‘just for fun’ or with a serious and driven long-term goal to venture into the world of publication — it’s still about having fun, about enjoying yourself, and — of course — about telling the story you’ve always wanted to to tell.

Good luck in these closing days!

WordCount-o-Rama. Note how the progress bar has now gone to a not entirely pleasant greeny/yellowy/vomity hue. Yum.

The Difference Between Finishing & Finishing #NaNoWriMo

Posted on November 18, 2010 by K. L. Kerr

Week three is in full-swing now. I started the week on a slippery slope back towards falling behind on my word count, but a bottle of Pinot Grigio and one crazy three-hour Write or Die session and I was back on track.

But there’s a problem here, something that was evident last year and is already becoming clear to me now.

I’m not going to finish this novel in November.

That’s not to say I won’t get to 50,000 words. If I keep writing at the rate I’m going, I’ll be able to get through to 50k by the skin of my teeth, and maybe a fraction more.

Problem is that I can write about anything, if I need to; I can wank on for pages about the goddamn “whispering wind” if it means I will get my word count up, and — at least in parts thus far — I think that’s what I’ve done. That’s not to say I’m not setting decent foundations; it’s just that I can say with more than a bit of confidence that a good portion of what I’ve wrriten is just crap fluff.

But let’s be gentle and considerate to my fragile psyche for the moment, if only to remind me that I’m doing well (I had my Granddad on the phone earlier, who — when I told him I was at 30,600 words as of today — moved away from the phone and called across the room to my Nan “She’s written thirty THOUSAND words!”, which I have no shame in saying made me feel just a bit good).

The problem is that even after the total 50,000 words have exploded from my inner consciousness and through some miracle (MacBook/Write or Die/Scrivener/Alcohol) ended up on the page, judging from the amount I’ve written in words compared to the amount I’ve planned in scenes…it just doesn’t add up! I’ve written 30,000 words-ish as of today, and I’m not really even into the meat of the story, I’m still on character development (hell, character introductions, in some cases!).

So the likelihood is that, come December 1st, instead of revelling in the fact that I wrote fifty THOUSAND words in a thirty day window, I will be sobbing quietly into my Andrex toilet roll (I don’t buy proper tissues, because I’m not a pensioner) since I still won’t have enough words to work until I have that first draft that NaNoWriMo proudly exudes we will have at the end of the event.

I suppose my main aspiration out of NaNoWriMo this year is to realise that my goal is a first draft, and not just about reaching the numbers (although that is a bonus, naturally). The reasons I have failed at writing this stuff so many times before has been down to various poorly conceived excuses, well-said in this blog post, including some of my favourites:

8. I can’t remember the filename.

21. My novel? Oh, it’s all right here in my head. I just haven’t written it down yet. But it’s gonna be brilliant!

A novel swirling around in your head — no matter how vibrant and wonderful — is only important to you, and while that may be good enough for some, for others, you just need to get those ideas out there for others to enjoy (and ridicule!). If I continue to put it off, as I have been doing since 2005 and onwards for all four books I intended with great enthusiasm to write following The Genesis, I may end up leaving a legacy of nothing but “shoulda woulda coulda”.

Of course, this isn’t intended to be a disparaging post, by any means. Well, not really. Maybe a bit. I only have to remind myself that The Vampire’s Son, the second book in the series and the one I wrote for (and won!) my first ever NaNoWriMo last year — and another one that had been sitting patiently on the back-burner for years — is yet to get a complete story. I wrote 50k for that, also, with about the same speed and exubreance and I am doing now

Although maybe now I’m getting a little further on account of I like Divided They Fall better. No, wait, that sounds mean. I love all my stories equally. Wow, what a massive lie.

Moving on!

So this weekend, I’m winging off to my muse’s house for a weekend of writing folly and wonder (although she’s told me she’s recently adopted a kitten, so no doubt the majority of the weekend will be spent watching it roll around white going ‘awwwwwwwwwwww’ uncontrollably), whereby I hope to sustain my writing drive and also to work out just how much writing it’s presumed I’ll need to do in order to create a complete first draft of Divided They Fall, something that has been in the pipeline for the better part of FIVE years.

How is everyone else’s Week Three going thus far? Have we gotten over the dreaded Week Two slump? Have we gained a momentum towards our goal? Does anyone else think that 50k isn’t going to be enough, or is that just me?