Getting back to writing!

 Soooo, I haven't written really in ages. I keep trying, and just give up. But not too long ago, I realized that having spent the past year on running DnD games, I've really been writing a lot.

While it's fun, and sometimes gets me okay tips, I want to try and put some of those ideas down on paper, real paper, or even e-paper, haha.

I'm also going to try and get back into entering writing contests, because why not?

All of my attempts will be going up on Wattpad for the time being. Who knows where that will go, if anywhere.

So this took down #29 on my 77/777 list! Getting there, one day at a time.

One more time?

Ya know, I keep bringing this blog back, and then forgetting about it, and then coming back and...

I'm not going to make any promises this go around, but hey, an update never hurt anyone.

Right now I'm managing a Discord server for Dungeons and Dragons, which sounds TOTALLY nerdy, and definitely IS nerdy, and I'm loving it. I've done some DMing, played in a few games, and well, this is my life now. A life of dice. Perfect.

Not to mention, I'm writing my own one-shots! Poor life means I make up my own adventures for folks, ha!

Other than for DnD, my writing has slowed to a crawl, but my IDEAS for writing are wild as ever. Came up with a plague/vampire story I want to do for NaNoWriMo this year. It's got a beginning, middle AND end. Which is bonkers, because I've never cared for the vampire genre in my life. But even my vampire LOATHING husband thinks it's awesome. So we'll see where that goes.

Reading is... meh. Though I did just finish The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. Satisfying as all heck. Threw me off a bit since I've been watching The Handmaid's Tale like it's life giving, but whatever. I'll take it. 😃

Can't wait for the next adventures that I wander into.😜

Cute as heck avatar made here!

Dusting off the... dust.

I've gotten myself into a nice rhythm of writing, so it's time for me to get back to reading, and writing reviews! I've missed it!

I'm not sure what's on the list first, but I've been putting out requests for ARCs, so I wanted people to know I'm for real here. Hi, publishers and agents and writers! I'm ready for y'all!

Let's do this.

So...

It's been a while since I've blogged, so forgive the confusion, the virtual dust, etc. I'm trying to make everything back to normal!

Tomorrow is my birthday, which gives me one year to finish my 1183 Days List, which is basically a bucket list, for while I'm still alive to enjoy it. Heh. The list is outdated, we've bought a house since I last updated it (wow!), I bought a camera last month (still figuring it out), and so much more, so I'll be updating that a little at a time. I'm hopeful that I'll still clear out the list by this time next year, so we'll see what happens!

My other plans for this blog are the same as before, me trying to make art (I just got two big boxes of paint gifted to me, so that was a nice boost!), and trying to write. And of course, reading and reviewing books!

I've gone ahead and signed up for OwlCrate, to make reading a surprise and more exciting than my usual life. I've heard nothing but good reviews about them, so I have high hopes. I'm also back to doing reviews through Goodreads and NetGalley, which is awesomely giving me lots of eBooks to review!

So lots to look forward to, and hopefully I don't flop out again!

Getting it all sorted!

So as of today (and handy that it's a Tuesday!) I'll be posting here every Tuesday. Once a week, that's it. A little run down of what's happening in regards to all of my goals (oh so many of them!) and life in general. (Book reviews still will go up as I finish books though!)

On Saturdays, I'll be making a post on my new author blog, Clover Salt (my pen name, isn't it cute?) in regards to my novels! The one in progress right now is called Otter, and as I've mentioned, it will be posted at Channillo.com! There isn't a whole lot there yet, but I'll be making it look nice today. Probably all in greens (or pinks? Different kinds of clover, hm...), to fit the name, heh.

And speaking of which... Otter will begin to be released, one chapter at a time, as of this Friday! Every Friday, a new chapter will come out. I am really excited to finally be putting something I've written out into the world. I've been writing for as long as I can remember, but I tend to keep things close by, and not show anyone. So this is a big deal to me! I hope everyone enjoys it, though!

No news about my to-do list right now (though a big pile of them are about to be knocked off of it, you'll see!) but my writing news was too big to not post about!

Have a great day, random strangers who visit here! :)

Camp NaNoWriMo and other things!

I did it! Over 57,000 words, one cross-country road trip, one horrible still undiagnosed illness (that keeps knocking me off my feet and makes me feel like garbage all the time), one toddler teething and hating to sleep, and so many other things that could have stopped me but DIDN'T!

Otter is FAR from over. I have a lot of editing to do. Technically, we're on vacation, I guess. We're trying to figure out what to do with our little lives, and our little family, up around Niagara Falls (the Canadian side, the pretty side, haha!)

For reasons that made sense at the time, but not so much now, I left my dog behind in Texas (she's okay!) but ugh, I miss her so much right now. It'll be nice to have that stinky pooch jumping all over me with her muddy (probably, she loves mud!) paws again.

But anyway, a pen name has been chosen (my husband doesn't think it sounds dumb, so I'll be using it, heh) and the pages for it will be made, and sometime this month, my first chapter of Otter will be released! SO exciting! I promise to have all of those links up and running soon. Hopefully sometime this week, even though later in the week, we'll be travelling once again!

On top of being super awesome for doing this, this also means I get to check off task #5 on my 1183 Days list! I have NEVER 'won' at NaNoWriMo before, so this was something I thought wouldn't happen at all. So an extra yay, for that!

Projects!

So the other day I mentioned how busy I am. I decided to make a list of things I'm working on, which I'll edit as I work on things!

Books

Otter - A novel about a girl who wakes up, confused about where she is, and who she is. She ends up realizing she's in a weird time loop... With strange results.
About 2/3s of the way done writing this one! When it's done, my husband is going to be my editor (best) and it'll be up on Channillo!

Voice/Memory - A novel series (probably a trilogy at this point) that hints that mental illness isn't what it seems.
Have been working on this one for literally years, finally figuring out how to make the plot work for me. Don't you hate when that happens, that the story wants to do its own thing? Sigh.

The above books will be released in their various forms (someday, into real live books, I hope!) under a pseudonym, which I'm tweaking (because my husband said it sounds weird lol) and will release out into the world soon as well. It's like getting to be an all new person! Yee!

Once the pseudonym's pages have been set up, my writing stuff will be located elsewhere, but I will link to it. :)

I also have other story ideas floating in my head, but they're a lot less... concrete than anything else listed here.

1183 Days

This started as a 'bucket list' sort of project back in September, with my 33rd birthday lurking around the corner (my birthday is in December) and me feeling like I wasn't doing enough in my life. Which is ridiculous, I'm such a busy chick!

As of today (April 20th, 2016) I've done 16/169 items. Why 169? That was the amount of weeks in between my start date, and my 36th birthday! I'm kind of slacking, I should be about 29 tasks in, due to it having been 29 weeks since I started, but a few things on the list will happen all at once. Like most things related to Onto Paper (our business we're hoping to open later this year!) or the things that are all in California (I want to attend the Ellen show, and maybe go check out a game show or two, lol) and such.

This is actually a really important thing for me to do with my time. There's so many little things I do, or want to do, that I never thought mattered, but they do, to me. And maybe to some of you!

When it's all done, whether or not I finish everything, I'm thinking of putting it out, pictures and all, as a book. Just to prove to myself that I and my life are important. :)

Onto Paper

This is my and my husband's idea, which started as a small creative lounge concept (a place for people to write together) and is blooming into a much bigger idea, with painting and crafting on site, and customers' works being sold right in-store.

Originally planned for in the San Antonio, TX area, we've had some bumps along the way (mostly related to my health taking a major dive, I'm currently in the middle of testing to figure out what's going on!) but we're still pushing forward, now in the Niagara Region of Ontario!

It'll start small, as many great things do, but I dream of it becoming a franchise-worthy place, where creativity can grow. We have plans for a charity through it as well, to benefit art programs for children. That's obviously coming up further down the line, but we're excited for it!

* * *

There's so much more that I'm working on, but these are the big three. Some smaller projects are linked to 1183 Days (one including painting rocks, heh) and some are just life things in general. But these are the ones that matter to me most!

Busy busy busy!

Oof, been slacking a bit here!

Between writing for Camp NaNoWriMo / writingchallenge.org and getting multiple offers from serial writing sites (I accepted the offer from Channillo, as I mentioned a bit ago!) while trying to plan a big move (it's going to take a bit longer than planned, but doing it right is more important than doing it FAST!) means that blogging has gone to the back of my mind.

As of mid-May, my first story's first chapter will be available for reading! My wonderful husband is going to be editing for me, so we'll be able to prod each other to help each other out. I'm excited to be finally putting something of mine out there on a professional level. The last time I did that, I think I was still in elementary school. Eesh!

So, this is really just a reminder post that I am still alive, and hopefully I have some real news soon!

End of the First Week of Camp NaNoWriMo

Whoo, I made it through the first week! Last time I tried to do NaNo, I was sick by day 4, and by day 6, I was in the hospital. Managed to get out 17k words by tapping like crazy at the end of the month, but it was too little, too late, to call it a "win"... This month will have its own challenges (we'll be travelling back to my home!) but I'm up for them!

Managed just under 13k words in a week, doing extremely well some days, and not so great on my off-days (mystery health problems make things so exciting, no?) but they balanced out to the point that if I manage to keep up this kind of rate, I'll get to 50k well before the end of the month.

Over on Twitter, I've made quite a nice little following, and was actually approached by someone who owns Channillo.com! It's a serial publishing site, where you submit your stories as you go along. Can be short stories, poetry, or a novel, sent out in chapters. As I was saying to my husband yesterday, it makes me think of the old days of FanFiction.net (does anyone still use that? Am I showing my age? Just checked, it's still there, looks the same as it did uh, when I signed up, whenever that was, ahem...) when people posted one chapter at a time of their fan works.

Only, you get PAID. I'm all for getting paid.

Not getting paid to mention them, by the way, I just really think it's a great idea. Though if they happen to notice a bunch of clicks coming from this post, they're welcome to send me a nice kickback!

So all in all, I'm glad I decided to go for it, and write my novella (this is not going to be a full novel, I already know that, but it's still fun!) because it's getting me noticed by the right people, and I'm having a blast with the author community on the whole.

Now here's hoping that our cross-country trek later this month doesn't make it too hard to keep the groove going!

Writing and 1183 Days task!

Technically, I'm a day ahead for Camp NaNoWriMo! I should be at 6666 words, but am over 7k already, whoo!

Completing any NaNoWriMo event is part of my "1183 Days" list (it's #5!) and so I have high hopes that I'll make it this time. To keep it "fair", I'm doing the usual 50k word count, since during camp, you can choose your own word count. I guess if I wanted to be sneaky, I could make it 8k words, and claim I win that way, but I don't like playing like that!

To help me on my way, I've accepted a secondary writing challenge, oddly enough at WritingChallenge.org! The goal there is to hit 500 words per day, but they aim at doing it all year round. They use Twitter to keep tallies, and to cheer each other on. It's actually a great atmosphere! You enter your word count on a Google document, it's on the honour system, but it's nice seeing how other people are doing alongside you! I love doing things with a group, it feels so much less lonely. Their word count to hit is low enough that it doesn't feel like a horrible chore, either. I usually manage to pump out that much in 10-15 minutes, honestly.

Especially while taking part in a word sprint! During NaNoWriMo months (April, July, and of course the main month, November!) @NaNoWordSprints comes alive on Twitter, and leads people in sprints and prompts, to help you work on your novel. Most sprints are between 10-20 minutes, but they often run 1k30 sprints, try to write 1,000 words in half an hour! The closest I've gotten this month, was 999 words. Seriously. Oh well, 27 more days to try!

(Camp) NaNoWriMo!

Whoa, it's almost April, which means a new monthly page for my Bullet Journal (it's so dull, unless you care about when my bills need to be paid, ha!), us hopefully finally going back home (yay!), and the first (second one is in July) Camp NaNoWriMo of 2016!


I have got to say, I have never "won" NaNoWriMo, in any of its forms. Super depressing, right?

There's always something that comes up. Last November, for example, I ended up so horribly sick, five days in, that I wound up in the hospital for a bit!

I am determined to NOT let that happen this time around! After all, "winning" a NaNoWriMo is on my to-do list. :)

I have a story half-planned out (so that I can still surprise myself), which is actually based off a dream I had a few weeks ago.

It's about a girl named Otter (that came from the dream, my dream is bad at naming things, much like I am, heh) who is stuck in a weird time loop, Monday to Friday. No weekends, just go to bed on Friday, suddenly it's Monday again. No days off of school for her!

Once she realizes she's not only stuck in the time loop, but also her neighbourhood (that would make anyone go nuts...) she starts to do horrible things, just because next week, none of it will matter.

Until the loop stops, of course. ;)

This will probably be a short story, but maybe I can stretch it to novella-length, and self-publish it for funsies. Why not, eh?

So wish me luck, you invisible beings, who I know look at this blog, but never comment! Don't be shy, I don't bite, promise. :)

To follow along with my word count, watch my twitter account @Cuddliest! I do a lot of word sprints and prompts on there too. :) My Camp NaNo (and regular NaNo) account is YayCupcake on the off chance you'd like to check me out on there too!