NaNoWriMo-Intro to My Novel and My Main Characters!

November 4, 2013November 4, 20135 Comments

Hey guys! Its the 4th day of NaNoWriMo. How is everyone doing so far?

I’m actually doing really great! My goal was to be at 20K words by the end of the month on my novel. I’ve already been writing for about a month, more about and realized that I was at about 15K words, already. So that was exciting. I wrote day one and day two, and none yesterday, and I’m at just past 18K words. That’s fantastic. So I upped my goal to 35K by the end of the month, so I still have that 20K goal.

But anyway, now that I’ve introduced you all to my plan for NaNoWriMo post here, and you saw where I write and what I need to write in Friday’s post.

So today, you’ll learn what my novel is actually about and you’ll meet my main characters, and my important secondary characters.

My Novel Synopsis:

Katy Valentine has a normal life in Brooklyn, NY, going to baseball games with her dad, spending nights dancing at clubs with her best friend, Madison, and trying as best as she can to avoid her next door neighbor and bane of her existence, Ash Matthews. Things are predictable, but normal and Katy is happy. That’s when the Z virus hits. Within a month, a huge chunk of the population has fallen ill, and died due to this mysterious virus. Before anyone can figure out what it is, or where it came from, the bodies of the victims disappear, all over the country. Katy ends up locked inside her own house, scared to go outside, scared to let anyone in, until suddenly the bodies reappear, and its like every zombie movie come to life. Except this time, they’re faster, they’re smarter, and they work together to get the one thing they want. And the only thing they crave, the only thing they fight for, is human flesh.

Meeting My Main Characters

Katherine “Katy” Valentine

The 411: Katherine, also known as Katy, is the main character of my novel, the protagonist. She’s eighteen years, and a senior in high school at St. Joseph’s Prep, which is a Catholic private school. She is a non-practicing Catholic though, mostly because she and her dad would rather watch sports on Sunday mornings. She is living in Brooklyn, NY, with her father, and her dog, Bandit. Most of her time is spend hanging out with her best friend, Madison, reading as many fantasy and science fiction novels as possible and going to listen to live bands and dancing. She has a fun personality around the people knows but can sometimes be judgmental and sarcastic around those she doesn’t know, or like. She has a sort of dry sense of humor, and when she’s feeling particularly scared or nervous, she tends to have more sarcastic comments. She tackles a lot of things with sarcasm.

The Physical: Katy is five foot four, with long brown hair, and really large brown eyes, with an olive skin tone that she gets from her dad’s Italian side of the family. She is Irish on her mom’s side. She’s strongly built, and has legs that are her major strength, and she’s very swift. She’s taking gun lessons, and she has the arm strength but has terrible aim, and has to continually work on it.

Conflict: Katy is going to spend a lot of the novel, figuring out how to open herself to trust other people, especially people who have earned her distrust, especially when it comes to Ash and her mother.

Name: I picked the name Katy because its a name that I really enjoy, and its a name that I’m always sticking in my stories. I think its fun when its Katy, but classy and traditional as Katherine. It means “pure”, which is completely unintentional. I am playing with that though, and you’ll have to read the novel to find out!

Ash Matthews

The 411: Ash Matthews is the second main character of the novel. He has lived next door to Katy and her father since they were nine years old. He is very important to the story, but since we are in third person, everything that we get of him is through Katy’s perspective. He’s a jock, as quarterback on the football team and a pitcher for the baseball team at St. Joseph’s Prep. He is full of humor and pranks, and spends most of his team teasing Katy and calling her “Kates”, and playing pranks on her at school. He tends to be the life of the party, and he has a hard time taking anything seriously. He’s dating Heather Carr, who is equal to him in popularity. While Katy tends to meet things with sarcasm, he tends to meet it with humor, and its hard sometimes for him to take things seriously.

The Physical: Ash is very well built, and athletic, due to his sports experience. He is 6’4, and has strong arms, and legs, wide shoulders and a narrow waist. He has messy brown hair, and impossibly pale blue eyes, and freckles all across the front of his face. He’s built very athletically, and is great health. He always has a smile on his face, and has many different ones. He has genuine smile, a teasing smile, a smirk, a flirtatious smile.

Conflict: Ash is going to struggle with his own emotions in the novel, being able to accept them, and being able to take things seriously and not always meet it with humor.

Name: Ash has gone through a ton of names before I finally settled on Ash. First he was Nate. Then I realized it basically Nate and Kate, and that’s just kind of weird, so I ditched it. Then it was Lucas, and I realized that every boy character in YA is named Lucas so then I ditched that too. His name is Ash, which literally means “from the ash tree”. I liked the name, is the story there. Maybe. Read the novel :)

Meeting My Main Secondary Characters

Madison Wu

Madison is Katy’s best friend. She is Asian American and lives with her parents and her three younger sisters. She’s incredibly ambitious, as a member of the Honors Society, the student class president and the dance committee chair. She’s dating Ash’s best friend, Brody, and is constantly trying to hook Katy up with Ash, despite his constant teasing. She’s a bundle of energy, and is always convincing Katy to get out of the house and go and have a great time.

I honestly picked Madison because its pretty, and because her parents are society people, and named their kids “Madison, Lexington, Victory and Brooklyn” because they love New York so much. It was kind of fun to do that.

Frank Valentine

Frank is Katy’s father. He is full Italian and has lived in their brownstone in Brooklyn since he was a kid, and inherited it from his dad when he passed away. He and Katy’s mom married young, when they got pregnant, and lived with his parents, until they divorced and Jennifer moved back to Nebraska, where she grew up. He is a cop for the Brooklyn PD and is very dedicated to his job, and works long hours, leaving Katy to kind of fend for herself. They are really close though, and spend a lot of their days at Mets games. He is also VERY protective of Katy, requiring her to take gun lessons, and constantly sliding pamphlets about self-defense and rape awareness under her bedroom door. He’s average height, black hair, brown eyes, and has the olive tone of his Italian family. He’s built healthy, and his hands are calloused and covered in scars.

Frank means “free” or “truthful”, which plays a lot into the character that Frank will become.

Jennifer Flynn

Jennifer is Katy’s mother. She lived with Katy and her father in the brownstone in Brooklyn until she and Frank divorced when Katy was 10 years and she returned back to Nebraska, where she grew up. She remarried a man by the name of Caspar Flemming but kept her maiden name Flynn. Her and Katy have a very rocky relationship, ever since Katy made the decision to live full time in Brooklyn with her dad. She’s mostly Irish, with a hint of Scottish background, and has dark blonde hair and blue eyes and works as a second grade teacher. I can’t say much more than that because you learn more of her character as the book go along.

Jennifer means “Fair Phantom”, and yes, that was done on purpose. ;)

Razi Cylon

I can’t say anything about her except that she’s the antagonist of the novel and that her name was chosen very carefully. I wanted a name that was fairly unique and a name that you could remember. I wanted something that worked well for an older woman, and this name really stood out to me. I looked up the meaning, and it meant “my secret”, and that is going to play out very well.

* * * *

I hope you all enjoyed learning a little bit about my novel, and about the main characters that you’ll meet in the novel!

I’m working on a title, and I’m going to be having a contest/giveaway for my novel. It will be posted tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest and I hope you all can participate!

Now, I gotta get to writing, since it’s day four and I haven’t written anything!

Happy Writing Everyone!

NaNoWriMo: Where I Write

November 1, 2013November 1, 2013Leave a comment

Today is the first day of NaNoWriMo!

As you guys may know, try I’m taking a slightly different approach to the official month. Instead of writing a full 50K novel, hospital I’ll be working to reach 20K words on my 80K novel. Throughout the month, page I’ll be focusing on reaching my personal goal, and focusing on making the best novel that I can make. I’ll be talking about writing advice, and you’ll get to know my characters and my story over the course of the month.

To read about the NaNoWriMo: What A Nerd Girl Says Version, click this link.

My dear contributor, Christina Marie, is also participating but in the full challenge. She’ll be a little absent this month, but you can check her out on her own blog, where she’ll be writing as often as she can, and will probably be posting updates of her own journey during this month.

Now today’s post, as I embark on this journey, I will be doing various posts through out the month. Today is day one. Which means its time to jump in. No wading in, I gotta jump in.

I’ve already written some, which I *will* be counting towards my goal of 20K, and now I’m ready to dive in. I have all that I need!

So today I’m talking about where I write, and what I need to write.

This is where I write: on my Macbook, on my TV tray in my room. I wish I had a desk but the living situation I’m in doesn’t provide for that. I write in Microsoft Office, though I HAVE been contemplating using Scrivener. For now though, this is where I write! My goal is to have a desk one day, where I can stare at a blank wall OR stare at my writing advice poster.

These are my notebooks. The brown and teal one is what I write in when I need to take a break from the computer. Sometimes I get on the computer and I get distracted by Facebook or Tumblr or writing for the blog, or just talking to all of you guys! I love doing all of that BUT sometimes I need to just and write and not focus on anything else, so that’s when the notebook comes in.

Its also a good place for me to take down notes, to remind myself later of an idea that has suddenly come to me. I also write snippets there too, like if the scene I’m working on isn’t going well, I’ll work on another scene. It usually helps me a lot and maybe answers questions about what is going on in previous scenes. So that’s what the scene is for.

The blue notebook is my Book Bible, which incidentally, is absolutely empty right now. The novel that I’m working on right now is a sort of urban sci-fi (or as Jessica Brody calls it “sci-fi lite” or “softcore sci-fi”-both of which cracked me up). I’ve only ever done contemporary because its so much easier to keep track of, while writing. With a sci-fi, things start to get confusing! Jessica Brody talked about creating a Story Bible, which is something they use in TV shows, to sort of keep track of characters and plot, the world, etc. I’ll have more on this when I do a post on Story Bibles on the 8th. Hopefully I will have more of it done by the end, and I can share more!

I can’t STAND to have quiet when I’m writing. Most writers, it seems, need quiet when they are writing, probably in order to concentrate on what they are doing. I swear, I can’t do that. I can’t do quiet. If you’ve ever read Sarah Dessen’s Just Listen, one of the main characters, Owen says “Silence is so loud.” For me, that’s true. Silence is distracting to me, and I don’t like it. So I always either have music playing, or a TV show/movie in the background.

When I listen to music, I tend to things that sort of put me in the mood for that scene. I’ve just really started doing the whole “novel playlists” or “character playlists” but I’m liking it. By distinguishing different songs for characters, I feel more in connect with them. The song above is for Katy, my main character. She has more emo, thrashing, hardcore, type of music and when you meet her, you’ll know why. Other characters will have different music, but I will be sharing that on the 20th, so stay tuned to that.

I also like watching TV shows or movies. I never watch anything new while I’m doing it, because that is incredibly distracting. I like to watch something I’m already familiar with. I don’t necessary have to pay attention and its a nice background noise. I need me some background noise.

I NEED water when I write. Most people are all “coffee, coffee, coffee” but not me. I kind of have a low tolerance for caffeine, especially coffee. If I have coffee, I can feel my heart speed up, and I am all shaky and I get all wired, and then I come crashing down. Maybe if I built up a tolerance/addiction to coffee, it’d be different. As it is, I need water. I always have a water bottle (or two, or three) with me while I’m writing, and often times, at least four empties too.

I also usually have a snack too. I don’t have one right now, which is probably why I’m a little cranky. I need to get a snack before I dive into actual writing. I’ve heard of some authors rewarding themselves with chocolate when they reach a certain amount of words, but I just dive in. I am like, hmm, this bag of Hershey’s kisses is a brilliant idea to get the writing juices going.

* * * * *

So now that I’m all set up for writing, its time to dive in. Well, I need to track down a snack (actually, probably a full meal since I am so rumbly in my tumbly), but then I’m ready to jump in.

I wish you all luck in NaNoWriMo and with your own writing. I hope you all reach your goals. Remember, we’re all here for each other, so don’t hesitate to email me, or FB me or Tweet at me, if you’re feeling down or need some help! Its going to be a journey this month!

Where do you write? How do you write? Do you need snacks or anything like I do? Share in the comments below!

What A Nerd Girl Says Celebrates NaNoWriMo with a Twist!

October 29, 2013November 1, 20134 Comments

So I’ve learned fairly recently that November is National Novel Writing Month, physician also known as NaNoWriMo.

And I thought, discount wow, symptoms that’s REALLY cool. A whole month dedicated to the writing of a novel.

There’s a whole website for it too, which you can check out here.

However, the more I checked it out, the more that I realized…its just not for me. I don’t really agree with it.

See, the idea of it is to write any entire 50,000 page novel in the span of one month. And I just really understand that. For one thing, I’m a busy girl. It will never take me only a couple months to write a novel. Ever. It just won’t. I have this blog to run, I have friends and my boyfriend. I love going to various events like book signings and movie premieres, and I like watching my television shows. Plus, I’m a full time student and November is a big month, with finals just right around the corner. I can’t risk that kind of crazy haha.

But I also just think the idea of writing a novel in one month is silly. Now maybe you don’t agree with me, and you’re taking part in the official NaNoWriMo and that’s okay! More power to you. But its just not me. I don’t agree with the idea of rushing a novel, and a short one at that.

And okay, I can see you all getting snippy at me. I know that the sort of novel you’re writing can determine the word count that you typically would write. If you’re writing a middle grade, 50,000 probably tends to be on the higher end. If you’re writing a YA, it *could* be okay, but its on the low end, definitely. If its an adult novel, its definitely too short.

Plus…like I said, it just feels WAY too rushed to me. There doesn’t seem to be any emphasis on actually writing a GOOD novel, more just writing to reach the finish line of 50K words. You get a nice little certificate and all of that. But you could literally just write the same paragraph, hell, even the same word, over and over again and that could be counted. There’s no judging. There’s no learning or growing or anything. Its more…who can writing 50K words that show some resemblance to an actual story in a month long period. It just doesn’t seem to be…productive or efficient or really helpful in any way.

Now I’m not insulting it, so I hope the people of NaNoWriMo don’t come after me, but I just don’t really like the idea of it. Its not me, and its not a lot of writers.

But I decided that as an aspiring novelist, as a writer, I couldn’t just ignore the idea. Even though its an internet based thing, I think its a great idea. Even though writers should write, write, write, all the time, any day and any month of the year, a month to refocus and regroup on a novel, and set those goals and meet some goals is a great idea.

So I’ve kind of created my own NaNoWriMo. My goal for November as a novel writing month is to focus on my novel, to set a goal of a certain amount of words that I want to reach and then focus on different parts of writing a novel. I want to test my characters, I want to develop strategies for writing and overcoming writer’s block. I want you guys to get to know my story, and in turn, I’ll become more confident in my own story.

So basically I’m going to spend this month, honing in on my focus on my novel, and getting better at it, and hopefully helping you guys to get better too!

My goal is to be at 20K words by the end of the month, and to have developed most of the story, in my head, or in a plot outline, so that I’ll have direction for the rest of it. I’m aiming on about 80K words, so I definitely think I can do this, and I already have about 5,000 written so let’s see if we can do this.

Throughout the month, I’ll be posting updates on my own novel writing, here and on Facebook and Twitter (so follow me on both!) and I’ll be exploring different strategies, advices and ideas to help get over some of the bumps in the road in writing a novel.

I hope you can join me on this journey! Feel free to write along with me, as I spend the month of November working on my novel and becoming a better writer :)

My Posts for NaNoWriMo

November 1st: Where I Write

November 4th: Meeting the Main Characters of my Novel: Katy, Ash, Madison, Frank, Jennifer, and Razi

November 6th: Best Writing Advice I’ve Been Given

November 8th: Having a Book Bible

November 11th: Character Interviews

November 13th: How to Deal with Writer’s Block

November 15th: Its the Halfway Point! Update, Struggles/Successes!

November 18th: Writing Inspirations

November 20th: Character Playlists

November 22nd: Free Write: My Characters Celebrate Thanksgiving

November 25th: Meeting my Characters in Artwork

November 27th: Setting up and Meeting Goals

November 29th: My Experience with NaNoWriMo

November 30th: Excerpt from my Novel…So Far