Emma Weylin

Archive for 2010

Yes boys and girls it’s that time of insanity I mean year of again!  It’s where you write an “insane” amount of words in 30 days.  50,000 to be exact.  Which roughly means 1,667 words a day (because 30 doesn’t divide into 50,000 evenly it’s really difficult to write the remainder word every day )

Really, it’s a moot point for me to participate in the fun and games.  I average 5,000 words a day (a full chapter when seriously writing a novel draft.)  Which means I should be able to knock out two complete novels in 30 days (75,000 words-ish a each).  Yes, boys and girls, that means I can 150,000 readable words in a month–that was for those of you with low reading comprehension which will be the subject of a later post.  Really, for as much reading as a person must do in this age of the internet it’s appalling at the low comprehension level of grown (pre-dumbing down) adults!  But I am getting off on a tangent and this is about the fun of writing an insane mount of words.

So why is this such a big deal for aspiring novelist around the globe?  Despite what writing gurus will tell you there is a process to writing the perfect novel.

• Part One: The daydream phase. It usually starts out with the writer (that’s you) daydreaming about something fantastical happening to you.

• Part Two: The daydreamer realizes this is an impossible course of events so they make up characters to slip into the slots of the people already populating the story.

• Part Three:  Take it or leave it, but this should be the planning phase. I personally can’t do part three because my best work comes with about 1 minute of daydreaming, 10 minutes of character prep and 30 seconds of planning.  I usually have the beginning in huge omnimax visual in my head.  I usually have a tiny inkling of the cataclysmic ending.

• Part Four: Translating the visual in your head to the accursed plain white screen with the laughing, I mean, blinking courser in front of you.  This is where NaNoWriMo comes to the rescue.  There a many, many, way to many to count, people who believe they should be cranking out perfect first drafts.  IT DOESN”T HAPPEN!  There, now you know, so lock your internal editor in strong, titanium box and feed her scraps off the table (you don’t want to kill her, just shut her up for this process) and go back to your “blank” page and start typing. Maybe the words come easy and maybe they don’t, but write.  The story and your subconscious can’t build on what’s not there.

“But I have to edit while I write!” I hear the whining now.  Stop.  My kids whine less about more  important things.  You can’t because you won’t. Yep, that’s right, you can’t just blaze though a rough draft because you WON’T do it.

Think about this.

No novel was ever written perfectly on the first draft.

No novel. Meaning none for those comprehensive deficients out there.

Why take two years to write an imperfect drwaft?  Write the novel in 30 days or less (Yes, check your typing speed.) You should be capable of typing at least 30 words per minute.  That’s 1,800 words an hour.  Divide that by 2 for thinking time and you have 900 words an hour! In just two hours a day that’s 1,800 words or well on your way to a rough draft in 15 days!  Personally, I have too much other crap to do in a day so I aim my mark at 500 words in fifteen minutes.  2000 in an hour or a full chapter of 5,000-ish in 2 1/2 hours a day.

“But I can’t devote that much time!”

Come on people!  You’re dream is be a published author!  2 1/2 hours a day is 17 1/2 hours per week (no, you don’t get weekends and holidays off!)  That’s less then a part time job. Isn’t your dream worth at least that much time?

Get that difficult first draft out!

There!

Now you can move onto part 5

• Part Five: Editing.  Wait a month (or 12 if you prefer) and catch the little muse who has been jumping around your desk for the last month and gently (you have to be careful with her as her feels are easily hurt) and put her in a nice doll house room you created just for her.  Make sure to give her crayons and paper so she can get started on your next story when you go back to the titanium box you trapped the editor in.  Be careful when opening it. She’s ravenous!  Those table scraps were nearly enough to keep her satisfied during the last month.  Make sure you have a thick, juicy rough draft manuscript in hand to avoid being bitten!  She will take a long time to work though that manuscript, but when she’s done, she’ll have devoured all the “bad” parts of your rough draft.  Commented (and demanded) what needs to be change and what needs to say.

• Part Six:  The actual edit.  Now that your internal editor isn’t pissed off at you anymore, now you hack into your “baby” manuscript and work it until it’s a beautiful young novel ready for the next phase (This can take longer for some than it does others, but it’s where the bulk of your writing process should be as this is the process that will make the work publishable.)

• Part Seven:  Synopsis and Query letter.

• Part Eight:  Get that agent and submit your work

• Part Nine:  Start over while waiting to hear what’s going to happen with your first manuscript.

The writing process in a nut shell and why I get irritated with anyone who can’t won’t chill out and just get the draft done.  Really, the perfect novel happens faster this way.

Now if I could only motivate myself to edit faster. . .

Pink was a Dragon
Bugs was a Fairy.
I was turning into a Zombie.

We went to a Halloween Bowling Party on Saturday where Bugs won the Scary Laugh contest and Pink won 2nd prize for her costume.  Out family/lane won the trivia contest.  They got candy and tokens for video games.  We had fun!  The day cost 72$.  We came home with 70$ in prizes and gift certificates.  Sounds good to me!

Today we went to the local mall for trick-or-treating.  We got more sugar, had more fun and took bad pictures.  I need to get my camera worked out again. It’s been so long since I’ve used it.
Anyway, I look like death warmed over.  The husband looks like a farmer and the kiddies are just adorable.

Now I am off to try to schedule my life!
New Year’s resolution 2011.  Repeat of 2010 only this time do it.

Signing off.
My head hurts.

Lacking Intelligence? Or purposeful stupidity?

In these days of blogs, online gaming and forums I would think the average person’s reading comprehension would be slightly above that of my first-grader, but alas, this is not true.

I belong to an online gaming community. It’s a game created by Big Fish Games. It’s called Faunasphere. It’s a delightful little game with the player being called a Caretaker. Your in game persona is a cute little animal you hatch from eggs you can earn as you explore the world and destroy pollution. You can help other players by gifting them items and they can help you by gifting you back. It’s a fun game for children and grownups alike. My mother plays, I play, and my children play.

So where does the lack of intelligence come in do you ask? Why the forum of course and the team of “Moderators” whose decisions I am supposed to trust. When anyone writes out a intelligent well thought out argument about any topic not on the “approved opinions list” it is quickly squashed with stupid questions that were answered in the original post by the favored posters and the mods tell you to stop being argumentative if you dare answer more than one of these “questions” and then lock the thread. The very same Moderators, who say there is no favoritism, yet are on all the “friends” lists of their favorite posters along with being on a special list of what is called a patron in the game.

Apparently Faunasphere doesn’t think too highly of the intelligence of their customers and that no one would be able to see this and think it suspicious.

My advice if you want to play this game is to play the free version. You can earn things that people will buy with bux (in game currency) and then you can enter items into the market to earn more without ever having to pay them a dime. Then stay away from the forum. You’re new so anything you post that isn’t already posted by someone else will be locked and you will be pointed to a thread created by one of the favorite posters. Go to customer support if you an issue as the moderation team is relatively useless.

Game Rating = 10
Moderation Team = 1
Customer Service = 3

So there is my review of the game Faunasphere.