Saturday, November 26, 2016

Music Sets your Feelings Free

Music is a language of emotions. Music can say without words what it would take a thousand pages to describe.


Tuesday, November 1, 2016

National Novel Writing Month is a go!

NaNoWriMo has officially begun, and as I'm writing this post I am currently at 2,226 words. I'm not done writing for the day, but I'm already very pleased with this strong start. My general strategy is to always stay one or two days ahead if possible, and to start getting ahead early. I'm anticipating a lot of quality writing time tomorrow hopefully, so my goal is to reach 10k by tomorrow night if at all possible.

I'm especially excited because I've already learned a lot of good things about my protagonist, Ashlyn Atterberry, that never came up in pre-writing. For example, I now know that she is the daughter of a single dad who she is separated from by a large-scale cosmic war. Exactly how she lost her mother I don't know, but she admires her father a lot and aims to be like him and to eventually make a run on the border to reunite with him. At the beginning of the book, this is her motivation for everything she does. She travels to a terrible planet simply because it's close to the border, and takes up a dangerous job to fund her planned escape.

Whether or not she succeeds is up for speculation right now, even by me. I have the basic plot details in place, but I don't know for sure how this particular detail will turn out. What I do know is that this motivation will be tested when a friend begs her to give up her quest in order to protect both of them. I won't spoil the ending, but I know how that one turns out.