Happy Halloween! T-Minus 8 Hours Until NaNo!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Lynn is so excited, and not just for Halloween. Guess what starts tonight at midnight? NANOWRIMO! It's seemed like an eternity, waiting for NaNo to role around, but it's finally almost here!

In regards to the short horror story we had to write for english, it went decently, I suppose. The teacher ended up giving us a 5-page maximum requirement, so I had to cut a lot of stuff out. But hey, you know what the writing worlds says. You have to "murder your babies" I would post it on here, but I think after pollishing it up, I'll submit it to see if I can't get it in some literary magazine in the near future.

And as far as NaNo goes, I'm wanting to double the insanity this year. The requirement for NaNo is 50,000 in 30 days. This year, only my second year, I want to do 100,000. This is because the main story I intend to work on should be done in about another 75,000 words. In adition to that, I was just struck a week or two ago with a fabulous idea and I want to get as far into that in one shot as humanly possible, hence the 100,000 word goal this year. Though the extra 25,000 of the new story is not that big of a deal, I do intend to finish See It Through by the end of November. I have the ending perfectly planned out, which has never happened to me before, and I want to take full advantage of that. Plus Lynn has to write things in chronological order, so she can't just skip ahead and write the end now. I have to get to know my characters way more before I can hope to portray them perfectly in the exact situation I plan to end the story with.

But yeah, I'll be fidgiting all night long as I sit around the fire with my folks handing out candy and waiting for midnight to roll around. And tomorrow, before the playoff game, my two NaNo friends and I are having our own little "write in" at our local Starbucks. Mom's even letting me hijack her laptop, so I should be able to get a lot done, both with the laptop and dangerous amounts of coffee and Halloween candy.

In closing, happy Halloween again and wish me luck when the clock strickes 12:00:01!

~Lynn

Step by Step, Heart to Heart

Hey, how goes it? Well, it's been a few days since my last post, and I'm sitting around doing nothing, so I decided to log on. Only 23 more days until NaNo; I'm so excited! As a pre-NaNo celebration, one of the forums I'm on is hosting a bunch of little competitions during this month and next month. The Halloween competition has already given me some great inspiration; the challange is to write a short story about what your NaNo characters would do on halloween. The minute I read this prompt, I came up with an ingenious idea. Ian, being the troublesome little brat he is, insisted upon playing a huge Halloween prank on his older brother, Nick, who in the short story, will be living in an apartment on the other side of town. He drags Rei along, and though his ingenious prank has yet to be revealed to me *ahem* it involves fake blood and a various asortment of odd clues and weapons. However, when they get to Nick's place, the end up finding him dead in the bathroom, which is coated in blood with a message on the mirror. They start freaking out, and then find themselves locked in the apartment on the 5th floor. I might have them escape by shimmying down a tree, only to be contacted [or chased] by Nick. In the end, it was all a huge prank, set up by Nick and one of his friends. This infuriates Ian, who has always been on the receiving end of Nick's jokes, and leaves Rei shaken andjumpy for at least a few days, but it's all in good fun.

I can't wait to start writing this, and as an added bonus, I can use this story for an English class assignment, because the assignment is to write a short horror story for one of our units.

NaNoWriMo '08 Baby!

So yeah, I didn't write much last year. Period. Not during NaNo, not ever. I'd like to say I'm going to change that, but I'm not going to make promises I doubt I'll keep. But anyways, it's a little over a month until National Novel Writing Month starts up again. This will be my second year, and I think I'm a lot more prepared for it than I was last year. I have also convinced my awesome writer friend Julia to do this insane project with me. We both did ScriptFenzy for the first time in April this year, and decided to go at NaNo the same way.

And my story this year? Well, let's just say that I've been watching Disney's Treasure Planet WAY too much lately. My story is close enough to be a parody [without the funny of course, because Lynn epicly fails at literary humor] and the main difference is that the male MC has a love interest. This is basically Lynn writing herslef into Treasure Planet, since her favorite character and obsession is Jim Hawkins. I am however adding a plethora of new material to the story, and making it darker and less Disney, to the the joy of everyone on the planet I'm sure. They're still "traversing the entire galaxy" on their hero's journey in 17th century rocket propelled gallions, but Lynn's just happy that she's de-Disney-ing an amazing story.

The main plot follows as such: instead of the MC being the angsting teen Jim Hawkins, it is a young female teen who loves life and above all, reading. She stumbles across a book that transports her into another word. This is where the angsting Jim-character is cued in. The two end up sailing across the galaxy, Rei, the female MC to find out how to get back home, and Ian, the angsting male MC, to find his long lost brother, who ends up being the antagonist. Much of the book takes place on the ship that they are sailing on, because the journey takes them a couple of months. Through this time, the two teens, both employed as "cabin-brats" on the ship, get to know each other better and ultimately end up-you guessed it-falling in love. But they realize this only after an epic battle, Ian nearly dieing, and Rei actually being sent back to her world in the middle of the climax and fighting. Some sappy stuff happens after Rei finds a way to return to Ian, including Ian's brother becoming good, Rei refusing to leave Ian's side, and a repaired relationship between Ian and his brother.

The part I love the most and find ingenious is the very end. But I'm not going to tell it here, despite the fact that I know no one reads this blog. I love the ending so much; Lynn has never before had an actual ending to anything she writes. Not a good ending anyway. In another book she's working on, Lynn had to plan out an entire sequal to the original because she could not, for the life of her, give it a just ending. And in the end she ends up killing off her favorite main character anyways, so it's all just one giant pile of epic fail.