Category: Make Art Every Day!

NaNoWriMo – Day 22 – Inside Out Collaboration!

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I am swamped with work this weekend, so no word count updates for NaNoWriMo. I should be caught up with work by Monday night, and then it’s on. I’ve got coffee, sandwiches, and ready-mades going into the last week of November, as I am familiar with this place called Panic City.

Anyhoo, I asked my little girl if she would help me meet my art goal today, so she very kindly drew me a picture of the Inside Out gang, only kittified, as is her bent, and I did the inking and coloring. Teamwork! Yah!

How are you doing this fine weekend out there in wifi space? Hope your word counts are high, as well as your mindset. 🙂 Shout me out some word counts!

NaNoWriMo – Day 20 – Took My Dragon to the Woods

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So far, this month has been packed with day job and other life concerns, typical for the month of November, but I finally found myself with a day dedicated to just working on NaNoWriMo, and so I fled to the woods.

You see, I’ve been in a sort of holding pattern with my story as I’ve been working out the answers to Big Questions that Really Should Be Answered Before One Embarks on a Novel. It’s been going well, I must say. I’ve discovered what happens in Episode 5 and who’s behind the whole mess; a character I killed off at the end of Episode 1 turned out not to be so dead, so that was a relief; and an idea for a sequel series has been lurking around the house. I’ve been keeping it away from the computer with my Nerf gun, but it is tenacious and I fear the second I turn my back, I’ll be outlining 10 books down the queue.

Plot bunnies! *clenches fist*

The rest of the story still lies cloaked in the Darkness of Unknowing. I’m sure that’ll all work itself out, right?

I know what you’re thinking: First of all, hello! It’s Day 20. How are you going to finish up NaNoWriMo if you’re prancing around in the woods? (Actually, I don’t prance. I just have a very specific gait….) You’ve got 10 days left, honey, and you don’t even know where you’re going!

But there’s sound reasoning behind my escape into the hills. Sometimes in order to figure out where you’re going, you gotta make an effort to get away from the noise of everyday life and go sit in the woods and paint pictures. Get your bearings, son!

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NaNoWriMo – Day 9 – When Your Brain Gets in Your Way

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I am off to the Magic Kingdom this fair day, so I thought I’d dig up something useful from the archives. This mega-post was first published back in 2011, but I think its message will be helpful to those intrepid folks writing novels this month. Keep writing!

 

“Autopilot” by Jon McConnell…my little brother!

Now we come to the third and most difficult part of an idea’s journey to becoming a first draft story, and that is the brain. That’s right. The very thing responsible for making us capable of placing words next to each other to form epic sagas that last generations is also the very thing that prevents more masterpieces being written than we’ll ever know…or would want to know.

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NaNoWriMo – Day 8 – Starry Night

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Today I followed along with YouTuber Untamed Little Wolf in her video Watercolor Starry Night Sky Demonstration. This one was fun. I think I’m getting a better understanding of wet-on-wet technique…mostly through my mistakes. It just makes me want to do more! It’s so mesmerizing watching all the talented watercolor artists on YouTube. I just lost an hour watching paintbrushes push pigments across paper set to music. I’m starting to accumulate a list of tutorials I want to try.

Up to 12,316 words for NaNoWriMo. I’m still working through the section that I’m rewriting from First Person POV to Third Person POV…and to be honest, I’m having a little bit of a struggle with this one. It may turn out that it needs to stay in the First Person. I’ve been back and forth on this one quite a bit. Sometimes stories are like that.

But I promised I’d show you how I handle changing POVs in manuscripts. Basically, I do a split screen in Scrivener, with the guide text on one side and the working file on the other. And while my preference is to have these side-by-side, you can toggle the split-screen option to split horizontally, if that works better for you.

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We’ll see what happens with the POV. In the meantime, it’s onward and upward, right?

NaNoWriMo – Day 7 – There Be Monsters

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Had a couple of busy work days there that threw me off my game a little bit, but the work was good. Now I’m back at the NaNoWriMo-ing and arting. Got in 1,544 words today, putting me up to 11,128 words. Still way behind, but progress is progress.

I also attempted a watercolor tutorial by the incredibly talented thefrugalcrafter Lindsay Weirich. I say “attempted,” because my painting came out nowhere near hers…but it was fun nonetheless. I’ll keep practicing. I learn something new with every try.

The Kiddo opted to do a page out of Laura Numeroff’s If You Take a Mouse to School. This is the mouse sitting in his little mouse house built of wooden blocks. He looks right at home. 🙂

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I promised the other day to post a screenshot of how I’m handling the POV change from first to third in my manuscript in Scrivener…however, it is getting late over here and little children (and old folks!) need to be put to bed. So I will post that tomorrow.

In the meantime, I hope your plots are thickening and  your word counts are adding up! If you want some cheering on, add me as your buddy on NaNoWriMo. I am squishyang, and I will pump you up.

NaNoWriMo 2015 – Day 3 – Kipper!

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IMG_3639My little girl has been home sick from school the last two days, so my word count hasn’t been even close to par for a 250,000-word project…however, over the past three days, I’ve averaged 2,708 words a day for a total of 8,125 words so far.

I feel obligated to point out that the first 50,000 words are mostly a rewrite, translating/retyping a First Person POV over to a close Third Person POV. That kind of thing happens…to some of us more than others. (Seriously…I’ve got an 80,000-word novel that I’m in the process of rewriting the other way: from Third Person POV to First…que sera!) Tomorrow I’ll post a screenshot of Scrivener to show the easiest way to do a rewrite like that.

How are you guys doing out there in NaNo Land? Have you gotten past your inciting incident yet? Ooh! Maybe you’re already past the Point of No Return…or deep into a try-fail cycle! Are there monsters? There are monsters in mine. There are always monsters in mine…

Hopefully, the little one will be fit for school tomorrow and I can really knuckle down and burn down some words. Today, however, was not a day for monsters, but a day of rest, rain, and gentleness. A perfect day for Kipper! So for today’s Make Art Every Day! Challenge, the Kiddo and I practiced drawing Mike Inkpen’s wonderful Kipper. (Didn’t she do a good job?)

We love Kipper!

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