NaNoWriMo season starts today!

It may not seem like it yet, but today marks an important benchmark in the year for me. This is the official start of NaNoWriMo season. Once upon a time, NaNoWriMo started on November 1st.  Then, I realized you could plan... so I got involved around October 15. Now that I'm an OLL staffer, my true NaNoWriMo season starts September 1. That was a Saturday for me, so this is the first official day.

The past months have been filled with Camp NaNoWriMo, saying farewell to Script Frenzy, and getting settled in my new job as Lead Forums Moderator at OLL for all events. But now is when I have to get serious.

We've been beta testing fixes and improvements for the NaNoWriMo website thanks to the beta buggers program.  With the help of my intrepid Ticketmaster Rob (Lousy Writer 13) we have been stomping the HECK out of bugs and making things better. We hope to improve tons of things that haven't been working quite right, and add some features we've been promising for a while now.

This season is special for me. It's a shift in the paradigm of work. I'm not a contractor anymore; I'm a full employee of OLL. This means more responsibility, greater attention to detail, and more organization. Something I really, really suck at.

So I have to make a promise. I have to be committed to really doing the best for you guys, and for OLL.  I have to commit to a real schedule, and to working hard on my duties.

And this year, I can't fail at NaNoWriMo like I did last year. I have a great number of great ideas tugging at my brain, and I am going to schedule writing time in my day. I'm even putting it on my calendar!


This also means it's time for A Dragon Writes to start updating more often. :) I'm so seasonal, I swear.

And let me also introduce you to the newest member of the Dudley household, my wild and wonderful kitten, Buster. He'll be joining me as designated distractor this year.

Just who is this crazy redhead, anyway?

Obviously, I'm a mom and a wife. I have 2 kids, 3 cats, and a dog. I like to grow basil.  I have a cherry tomato plant in my yard that looks like it's drunk but makes the best tomatoes I've ever had. I have a disabled husband, and suffere from a severe case of Uber Lazy myself.

I am a writer, though lapsed. I love words, and have an above-average vocabulary and excel at communication through written means. I'm no slouch at public speaking, either. I'm a community moderator (not here on Sparkpeople, though I wouldn't turn down the job if offered.)

I'm a dilettante who knows a little about a lot of things, but a lot about very few things. Those things I know a lot about though, I tend to get a little obsessed with from time to time.

I am mercurial; I tend to be very positive as a general rule, but I have a mean bite, and can turn cranky at the drop of the hat. I'm always willing to admit when I'm wrong, though, and have apologized for many a foot-to-mouth insertion. I have made friends of enemies.

I love tea. A LOT. I am a regular at a local British tea room, and am trying to get as many friends as possible to join me. My favorite teas are white and herbal, particularly chamomile.

Exercise-wise, I prefer group classes for motivation and camaraderie, and gravitate to boot-camp style classes. I can't stand Zumba, though I'm a big fan of kickboxing.  I hit harder than my husband, and no longer have trouble opening pickle jars. I will, however, fake it now and again to keep my husband feeling like he's needed. ;) I have rediscovered my age-old love of biking. In college, I would ride 20+ miles per day, since I had no car. I am an avid but terribile runner, and will probably never run more than a 5k now and again.

I'm a bit of a spendthrift, and love to drop silly money on microtransactions in worthless games on my computer. I love toys... I have an android tablet, an iPod touch (my second, I lost the first), and a prepaid dumbphone that I would very much like to replace with an iPhone. I'm a gadget-a-holic.

My favorite foods are lemon pepper chicken alfredo, everything bagels, and steak. I'm majorly addicted to cheese, although I'm mildly lactose intolerant.  At any given time, there will be 5+ types of cheese in my fridge. Right now I have Philadelphia 1/3 less fat cream cheese, sweet basil formaggio, mozzarella, Sargento colby jack ultra thin slices, sharp cheddar, and Laughing Cow swiss wedges, and I will eat every last bite of every one of them.  I drink 2% lactose free milk.

And last, but certainly not least, I love dragons.  I've used the handle "Dragonchilde" since 1997, when I discovered the world of online communities in college.  I plan to get a dragon tattooed on my shoulder. I used to be afraid of pain, but having two kids with no pain medications pretty much removed all fear of that.

And that's me. So who are you? Enquiring minds want to know.

Times, they are a changin'. Farewell, Script Frenzy

5 years. 1.4 MILLION pages. Over 85,000 scriptwriters served!  Script Frenzy has been an amazing experience for everyone involved!  For those who have participated in Script Frenzy, it’s been nothing short of magical, and the event has helped introduce the art of scripting to writers who otherwise never would have thought of trying.  

It is with great sadness that we must announce that in spite of this, we have experienced steadily declining participation for the past two years. From a peak of 21,000 writers in 2010, we have dropped each year to just 16,500 in 2012, and have never quite made our fundraising goals since the event’s inception.  Because of this, we have been running Script Frenzy at a loss, and it is no longer sustainable as a standalone event. As a result, the Office of Letters and Light’s board of directors has voted to retire the event.

We have decided to refocus our efforts on the NaNoWriMo and Young Writer’s Program events, to make them the absolute pinnacle of what we can achieve in providing motivation for writers worldwide! We served more than 350,000 writers in 2011, and the number of participants grows every year.

Script Frenzy is a labor of love, and one we are desperately sad to see retired. To that end, we are committed to preserving the community and resources we have amassed over the years. We will be creating a Script Frenzy forum on the NaNoWriMo website for those who have hung out here, so that you will continue to be able to gather and meet with your fellow scriptwriters year-round.  

We plan to use the time and resources this decision frees up to continue to improve and build the NaNoWriMo and YWP events. Our community grows significantly every year, so we feel that focusing our resources on these programs is the best way to carry out our mission to help children and adults find the inspiration, encouragement, and structure they need to achieve their creative potential. What does this mean for NaNoWriMo?

First, have no fear: this does not mean that NaNoWriMo is in any way at risk. Quite the contrary! We plan to pour all of our hearts, souls, and time into making it more amazing, more spectacular, and more... everything!  We want to continue to bring you the best events we possibly can.  We want to focus on motivating writers world-wide year-round!

Script Frenzy has been wildly successful; thousands of winners (9,455, to be exact) is testament to the impact this amazing event has had on you, your communities, and writers all over the world.  This is not a defeat, rather the next step in the evolution of OLL and the mission we have to bring the joy of writing to everyone who wants to tap into their creative potential!

I hope that you will join me in my heartfelt thanks for all of those who have made Script Frenzy possible.  From Chris Baty, who made the whole thing possible with his crazy idea, to the MLs who worked themselves to the bone to bring Script Frenzy to their communities, to Jennifer Arzt and Sandra Salas, along with their support staff and volunteers who have put everything they had into bringing the event to you.  

But most importantly, our greatest thanks go to you, the writers and artists of the Script Frenzy community. Without you, we wouldn’t have had the most exciting 5 years of scripting we’ve ever experienced!

If you'd like to leave a comment for the staff, you can do so on the SF forums, here.

Flip flop

So I switched stories; I found myself at a bit of a wall on Spirit of the Hunt (the handwritten one) so I switched over to the sequel. It's a bit liberating to be able to just change stories when I get stuck, rather than being wedded to one and forced to keep writing on it.

I think that Spirit is stuck because I was writing past the ending; it was stuff I needed to write, I think, since it was important character development, but I don't know that it will end up being in the final piece.

It's fun to go back to the sequel; I love those characters so much. It has a bit of the feel of a YA novel, and I wonder if that's how I might market it. It might be a better first attempt than Spirit would! Who knows.

Gotta finish one before I can start thinking about what order I want to try and publish them in!

Tracking spreadsheet for #WIP500

Because I'm writing offline, I'm finding it difficult to keep up with my daily totals. I'm writing them down, sorta, in my notebook, but I've been bad about it. I'm marking which day is which, but I don't want to re-count each time.

So I made a simple spreadsheet on Google Docs. See, I love spreadsheets... I'm not GOOD at them, but I love them. Eventually, I hope to have progress charts, reports, all kinds of things to show off how I did month-to-month and such, but for now, it's just the basics. I have it tracking your best day, how many days you've entered a count for, average words per day, totals, and the percentage of the total you've got so far.

I also have it flagging days you wrote under 500 with red, and over 500 with green.

Here's the clean copy so you can download it for your own use if you'd like to. Feel free to redistribute, edit, do whatever to your own copy. :)

My personal progress (which is terribly inaccurate for the first 6 days, because I kinda guessed based on G+ posts and what my totals are on Cara's site) can be found here.

I plan to continue adding to it as I figure out how to make Docs display the data in a useful way. I like charts.

Updated the layout

As much as I loved my beautiful green background and rainbow plant life... I've been a little tired of looking at it, and it was just plain cluttered. So I switched to something cleaner and simpler, and a lot easier to read.

Fare thee well, beloved template... you've served me very well.

Good progress!

Last night I got into the zone. I hit a good place in the story, full of angst and drama, and blew the #WIP500 goal out of the water. The 4th, I wrote almost nothing. I was so tired I couldn't focus, and only ended up writing about 150 words... but yesterday? 1500. SMOKED the total. That's a good two-day buffer on my 365 day challenge.

This 500 a day goal is proving to be very motivating for me. I'm not limited to a new work. Which is what I think torpedoed my NaNo this year... I didn't want to write something new. I have too may good WIPs to start something new. Being able to write 500 words on anything has been awesome.

So I think I'm going to write some more, and see if I can't write my January 6 totals even higher. :)

Right now, my FMC is angsting over her lot in life, not wanting to be a vampire (boo hoo, existential crisis) and the MMC is about to tell her to grow up. And it's going to be fun.

Stop doing that!

Ready to tackle writerly things for the new year? Stop right there, and read this list. It's 25 things writers should stop doing, right fucking now. And these are things that are all over the NaNo forums, where people worry about this or that, anything to prevent themselves from actually writing.

I started #WIP500 last night. I hit right at 500 words, estimated, and finished before bed. The cool thing is I had a spot of inspiration, and thought of a spiffy plot twist that just might result in me being able to combine the two endings I'm battling in a way that's sensible and pleasing to me.

I wanted to write more today, but I've been so cold that my poor fingers couldn't hold a pen, and barely type. I spent most of the day snuggled under a sherpa throw and two cats, just trying to stay warm.

So what do you think... can I really write 500 words a day, every day?

Can I do it for the whole year?

I can... but will I?

#WIP500

Joining a new challenge for the new year. I seem to do better with concrete goals to aim for (even if I don't actually complete them totally. So in the interest of that, I've joined #WIP500... the goal being to write 500 words a day. Not at all a hard goal... I can church that out in less than 15 minutes if I try. It'll take longer handwriting, of course... but I think I can do this. I've got about four WIPs that I need to work on, so this is the perfect motivation to do that.

I'll also be tweeting about my progress (or lack thereof.)

Let's do this thing.

For personal reference: 126.

So close, and so far away!

We're down to two days now. This is one of the best parts of NaNoWriMo, to me. The anticipation, the nerves. I love it. The buzz on the forums builds to a positively electric level, so that you can almost feel the excitement.

I've been having a good season, so far, and I've even done a little planning. I don't think I'm doing a true outline, as I'd planned. See, I've decided on a retelling of J. Sheridan Lefanu's classic pre-Dracula novel, Carmilla. I liked the story, but was deeply unsatisfied with the ending, and I really disliked the wimpy female main character. There were so many questions left unanswered that I'd like to answer them! SO I'm spinning it with Carmilla herself as the main character, and a sympathetic, tragic figure.

I have been going over the original novel, and making character lists, and making notes. I had a friend over Thursday morning for coffee and writing chat, and he had a GREAT idea for the central conflict.

See, I'm wanting to give an original spin to the old story, and I think I've gotten it.

Today's going to be a good day, too, because tonight's the local kickoff. I LOVE my local group... such a fun group of people. I'm hoping to have some new faces this year, too! I've seen a few new people posting in the forums.

So this is all rambly, but I wanted to let you know I'm still alive!

Couch to 5k, Week 1, Run 2

I DID IT! I did it, I did it, I did it, I did it!

It wasn't quite the traditional way; I ended up having to stop with 3 runs to go to talk to a neighbor (this is why I don't like to run on my street) but it actually worked out well. I was about to give up, because my ankle was screaming, but while I talked to her (for about ten minutes) I stretched and ran in place... the ankle stopped hurting, and I finished my last three runs!

I exercised for 45 minutes total (including the neighbor chat) and ran/walked for 1.9 miles! (That's according to my pedometer, the accuracy of which I doubt.

I drank plenty of water, and stretched afterwards after my cooldown walk, in the house.

I feel fantastic. I grinned like a total moron during my last run.

It was SO much easier. After two runs the first day, I was already panting and breathing so heavily, but this time, I hit run three, and again with the idiot grinning.

I feel so proud of myself. I can do this (and kept telling myself that during my runs. I had to coax myself to do this, a lot.)

Not Writing, but Exercising!

I know this isn't writing related, but I felt the need to include it anyway. I mean, any update is better than none, right? I'll apologize in advance for the length of this update... it's actually two updates in one, lifted more or less straight from Google+.

I've embarked on the wild world of running. The UK NHS has a program called Couch to 5k... and I figured it was PERFECT for me.


My first steps into the world of fitness were abortive, but not for the reasons you think. I was all set yesterday morning, had my mp3 player loaded with my NHS couch to 5k podcasts. Got up, got Elisabeth ready to school, and discovered the gate had been left open, and our newest dog, Ozzy, was gone. So I spent half the time I should have been walking/jogging riding around. I gave up riding around in the car, and used a little dog logic about his past escapes and what I know of the neighborhood. I drove over to the next neighborhood (where there's an empty lot connecting it to ours that's infested with feral cats) and decided to walk there, calling Ozzy occasionally.

I got about 4 minutes into the 20 minute routine, when something bumped into my leg, and nearly scared the shit out of me...

...it was Ozzy. Muddy, shaking, scared, and happy as hell to see me. I put his collar and leash on, and walked for a few more minutes, but by that time I was too giddy and tired to continue walking, so I brought Ozzy home (muddying the hell out of my car's passenger seat in the process) to his worried Papa. By that time, it was getting too hot to be outside.

So it was a good and bad morning. Bad, because I didn't even get halfway through the first day's run, good because I found my dog, whom I was certain had hauled ass halfway to Atlanta and would have to be picked up by the pound to be found.

Stupid dog. I'm glad he's home, even if he spoiled my run. (And I did get 7 minutes of exercise in... that's 7 minutes more than I got the day before!)

After yesterday's abortive attempt, I decided to go ahead and start again today. Today went much better; although I did make a couple of mistakes. My first mistake was not properly stretching; I really started to feel it about halfway through. My second was forgetting my water bottle... I was REALLY parched.

I did good though, I got through 15 minutes of the 20 minute workout. I would have done more, but my ankle started to flare up (I had a severe sprain/broken foot bone a couple years ago that still bothers me) and I had to stop. It actually hurt so much by the time I got home that I had trouble driving.

But, I decided to join my neighbor who was walking to cool down, because I was still overheating and breathing heavily. We walked at an old lady's pace for a while, and I felt much, much better. I've only got a distant ache in my ankle now, and it didn't swell up, in the end. I'm probably going to take a break tomorrow, let it recover, and run again thursday, although I may walk tomorrow. I haven't decided.

Total exercise? about 6 minutes of running (60 second intervals) and 38 minutes of walking. 2754 steps on my pedometer, roughly a mile and a half total.

I'm very pleased with this.

Places I can feel the burn: My ass (woohoo!) calves, and surprisingly, my arms. I know a little bit about running/walking, and know about moving those arms. Once I get into running to where I'm not having as much trouble keeping up with the full routine, I'm going to get some arm weights.

Lessons learned: Stretch, you idiot! Don't forget your water! Don't forget to do a cool down walk. I knew that last one, but I wanted to reiterate it to myself so I don't forget.

I'm probably going to repeat week 1 until I can do the whole 20 minutes, whereas normally you'd do three week 1 sessions before moving to week 2. I want to do this right, so I don't give up.

Google+ has my brain.

So I've joined Google Plus. Why is that being posted here, you might ask? Well, as it turns out... it's a writing community goldmine. A LOT of the MLs from NaNoWriMo have accounts there, and thanks to the efforts of some intrepid users, finding lists of them isn't hard.

I've expanded my circle of people I communicate with, and it's been actually quite stimulating to do so. I have discussions with interesting people, who do and say interesting things. I don't treat it like a Facebook clone, it's becoming something a little different. It's sort of a social blog... there's no character limit that I've found on share updates (statuses) so the brevity I so detest on Facebook isn't there. It's also attracted people who really don't care for social websites, so things just feel differently.

Hangouts are fun too, for inspiring you to write, word wars and the like. I can REALLY see it as being useful in November. I can't wait to try it out.

And if you feel like adding me, do so. I don't have to be as protective there as I am of my Facebook. (Thank you, Circles, and thank you, Google, for being so sensitive of our privacy needs). Just let me know who you are, so I'll know which circle to put you in. :)

The strangest motivators

Okay, so I got started on Camp, and then stared. And stared. And stared. I couldn't make the words come. I just couldn't figure out where to go next. I'm breaking a cardinal NaNo rule, and starting with a work in progress, but I have too many good, salable pieces in progress to start yet another one that would languish unfinished, so I promised myself I would finish at least one before starting a new one.

So you know what the random bit of social engineering did it for me this time?

Livestream.

It turns on my webcam, if I want it (I usually leave it off) and broadcasts my computer screen in live streaming video. I've had quite a few friends stop in for a chat, and it's been really, really fun. Nothing gets me writing like knowing that someone is literally looking over your shoulder while you write! What's cool is in addition to allowing me to tweak things like mic input and camera, I can also have it set to stream what's going through my speakers, so I can share the music I'm listening to with my watchers!

Very fun.

I got the idea from Kit Fox on the NaNo forums... so you should try it out, and post your link there for the rest of us crackheads to watch! It's gotten me through my mad stuckness, for the moment, and I have forward motion. It's not GOOD motion, but it's moving. I've picked up my 2007 NaNo, Heaven's Bounty, and plan on adding it.

Man, I am a crackhead.

Ready for Camp!

 

 

So Camp NaNoWriMo launches in a few days, and I think I'm ready.  I have the marshmallows, the graham crackers, the chocolate bars. 

Wait, I'm suppose to be writing? 

Oh crap. 

Umm... maybe not quite as ready as I thought I was.  

Well, I am. I think I'm actually going to be participating as a rebel this time, since I have about four really good WIPs that I need to work on, and I don't have any fresh ideas for camp. I've got a couple, but they're just tidbits of ideas.  The one I'm really wanting to work on is Heaven's Bounty, my (2008?) NaNo. It's actually pretty good. I love the characters, and their interactions, my only real problem is I'm a little stuck on the ending.  I don't quite know how I want to end it!  I think I'm getting close, but I don't know. See, I have a little confession to make: 

I suck at endings. I mean, I tend to start and not finish so many novels that I have far less practice finishing them than I do starting them. So maybe that's what I need to focus on for a while. Either way, I'll be writing 50k during camp, and I hope you join me. We're launching this week, and I've had the pleasure of poking around on the new site in testing all last week, and it's so pretty and simple and awesome. I hope you like it! 

So in the interest of a Camping theme, let's talk toasting marshmallows. Do you like yours on fire, or lightly toasted until golden brown?  Do you like to eat off the outside that's been cooked and re-toast the innards? How do YOU like your marshmallows?

My, how far technology has come

Right now I am testing my bluetooth keyboard link with my iPod. I think that if I take this with me to write-ins, I can actually do some mobile writing. I Just need to find a fold-down keyboard, because the mac keyboard is nice, but not exactly easily portable. I've heard that portable options exist. Now, my iPod is official Da Bomb. Mark 2. I decided about halfway through to post this to a blog, and realized that this is just perfect. As long as I have wireless (hey, it's not an iPhone) I can do anything my computer can do. Why do I own a laptop again? Welcome to the future, folks. This is reality. Next step? Those projected screens you see in all the sci-fi flicks.

Look ma, another plot bunny

While I was working on my novel, I actually had a plot bunny. You see, the magic system is based on an elemental sort of thing, you know, earth, air, fire, and water. As I'm writing the climax, though, I'm finding some weaknesses in the system, namely that the antagonist has an opposing element to the female protagonist. Now, for the confrontation, it's fine, but it's left me some holes in the rest of the system that I need to plug.

So I plugged in elemental magic to Google, and started getting some ideas to work around it, and I think I've figured out which way I want to go.

I think I'm going to go with a revamped elemental system based on the Chinese elements; fire, water, earth, wood, and metal. I don't know if I'll keep that exact pattern, but the flowing nature of it, and the way some of it opposes the rest fits the story as I'm writing it better then the traditional european four elements.

It also gives me more potential for side plots and additional character classes/races. AND it gives me more ideas for the sequel to this one, possibly breaking through the block there.
I love it when progress is so profound.

Now, the children have gotten disturbingly quiet, so I'd better go make sure they haven't managed to finally kill themselves in their room.

A milestone reached

Last night I accomplished something truly great. See, if you remember from posts past, I like to write by hand, and purchased a journal-sized notebook to write in.

Well, as of last night, I've officially filled it up.

That's right... It's DONE. Well, not the story, I'm still moving forward on the story, but the book itself is very full, and I've started on a second.

Just LOOK! Look at the beautiful, and so very full pages!

Umm... ignore the chicken scratch.

So with that done, I've got a backup book on hand, that I've already continued on. I removed the handy THIS IS MINE ribbon from the red book and moved it to the brown.

I'm even continuing the page numbering from 249. I'm at the climax of the novel, just at the beginning of the big confrontation, and I've got FORWARD MOTION. I can't wait to write tonight.

I think I'll go do that now.

crossposted to heatherdudley.com

BLARGH! I hate domain name propagation.

Okay, so as you may have noticed in the previous post, I've decided to activate my parked domain name, and set up a word press blog there, and importing everything from here to there.

Everything seemed hunky dory, until, of course, I realized that a wordpress.com installation lacks a very key feature: plugins. As in, all those pretty, customizable wordpress widgets? No go. It also lacks some other key features I kinda need.

So I decided I'll activate a true hosting account with my other hosting service (used for other websites) that will cost more than $1 a month, but will allow me ultimate power.

Only problem with that? DNS propagation. For the uninitiated, this means I have to wait anywhere from 1-3 days for the entire world's nameservers to catch up with the change.

So heatherdudley.com is currently offline. However, you can access the plain wordpress blog at heatherdudley.wordpress.com until propagation completes. Hopefully, it won't take too long. It's just annoying me because the wordpress installation I set up on fatcow points to the domain name, so they have to catch up with the fact that I'm already pointing to their own nameservers. Sigh.

So, to pass the time, and hopefully leave you smiling, and waiting once again for my infrequent posts to show up on my pretty new domain, I leave you with a kitten attacking a puppy.

You're welcome.

Moving Day!

After much thought, I've decided to activate my long-dormant domain, http://www.heatherdudley.com. I love blogger, but it's not as feature-rich as I could like, and it's time for me to move on up to a grown- CMS. One day I will, but until then, Wordpress will do.

I plan on moving my subscriber list as well, but until then, you can visit manually. I hope to see you there, and know that hopefully this will not be an interruption. It's not like there's that many of you around! Either way, thanks for reading, and I'll see you over there!