I like this section a lot

(Lilith is telling Alex about the meanings of her name and her sister Valerie's name.)

“Anyway, Valerie’s name is way less interesting than your friendly neighborhood Beautiful Night Monster. Although, it does mean the same goody two shoes ‘brave,’ in like, three languages. And Lian means Daughter of the Sun.”

“That’s kind of hilarious,” he said. 

“What? That her name is Brave Daughter of the Sun Sun?”

“No. Well yes, but I was thinking more that you’re the Night Monster, and Valerie’s the Daughter of the Sun. It’s pretty cool.”

“Eh. I guess so. Valerie isn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows though.”

“No, I guess not. Well, I mean sometimes. But really I think she’s more complicated.”

“I think we all are more complex than the shiny little boxes people stuff us into.”

“Yeah.” He took another sip of his root beer. Lilith looked at him. She tried to see what was shoved inside the shiny box labelled “Sensitive Nerd,” but Alex would have to open the lid for her first.

(If you know who I'm referencing with both the shiny boxes, and the imagining each other complexly, I love you.)

Pickle is an Awful Procrastinate-y Novelist/Student

Hello.

I have something to confess to you all:

I am really bad at deadlines.

This probably isn't surprising if you've read any of my posts on here from last year. I woke up at 5:30 am today so I could do my homework that's due in two hours. My novel won't be done until December 17th according to my stats. Although, I actually have an excuse this time, and also some tips.

Oh. Hi excuse hat. THIS IS NOT YOUR BLOG YOU STUPID HAT!

So My local Big Famous University (What? You don't have one of those?) has a biannual (twice yearly, not every two years) event where for a weekend, students and graduates teach classes to middle school and high school students. This weekend was my fifth time going. It's the coolest thing ever.

I love taking the writing classes, because, well... I like writing. This year, I took a class called How To Write A Novel In A Month. It was downright groovy. The teachers had some really great tips for making writing easier, not to mention the class came up with a list of what makes a good character.

Here is a tip that was super useful:

Graph your plot

This does not mean you need to know every detail of your plot. I'm definitely a Pantser.  My graph looks like this:

This lovely little bit of data (mmm.... data) is what I want my novel to be like. I want it to get interesting pretty quickly,  even off for a bit, and then get all exciting again. Now watch- 

BAM! Now it's a plot. Sort of. I have the ideas laid out, and I now where I want them to be! And if you're a Planner like our dear Potato, you can be as specific as you want. This way, if I get stuck, I can just choose a different point in time on the line. See?

Just remember kids:

The month of November might be a direct progression of cause to effect, but can write as wibbly wobbly timey wimey as you damn well please.

--PICKLE

P.S. I know my graph only goes halfway I'm only doing 25K, so it was a joke :P

Welcome Back Invisible People

Heey!

It's Pickle here. Wow, it's been a while. I'm glad to be back and writing with you a mere twenty minutes before I start some intense novelling.

I've been terrified since about ten o'clock when Potato and I were emailing. She has since gone to bed probably, because time zones.
I expect the real panic to set in soon.

I'm dressed to novel, in my pj pants, Green Eggs and Ham shirt, a fedora that clashes awfully with my hair, and the most badass gloves in existence. (I will take this opportunity to remind you that it's not swearing if there are actual donkeys on my hands.)
Not to mention some steampunk eye makeup that I just can't be bothered to take off.

Ok...
I'm going to go look at cat pictures or draw or something to distract myself for the next 18 minutes.
Bye!

--PICKLE

P.S This post really makes no sense. Forgive me.

I didn't win

But I'm still proud of myself, and I'm proud of Potato, and all my other friends who were excellant, and I think all won.

So wow...

I don't know about Potato, but I'm going to update you guys on my other writing projects every now and then, but don't expect it to be often.
If you want to hear every heartbreaking detail, I'll probably post it all on my blog: http://annieredsky.blogspot.com/

I would give you a link to Potato's blog, too but if you don't personally know her, you can't see it. Sorry.

But besides that, I guess I'll see you next year!!

Write on, PICKLE

Pickle's NaNo Playlist

Lights by Ellie Goulding, I came up with my book listening to this, so it's always nice

LOOOOOVE this song, it's stuck in my head, and thanks to the Dare Machine, a line from it's in Searching For Solace.

Lonely Lullaby is one of my absolute favorite Owl City songs. I love all of his really sad love songs, and pretty much all his music, actually. But this is my current fav.

So here you have it, what I listen to when I write. There's lots more, but these are the Big Three.

What do you write to?

--PICKLE

Things To Not Do In November #1

Start reading Sherlock Holmes.  It's far more interesting than writing.

--PICKLE
(what do you do when you should be writing?)

That Horrible Graph Feeling

First of all, yes I am up at 6:22. I didn't set back my iPod last night, and therefore, my "GO WRITE!" alarm went off at six...

So (as I do every morning) I made myself a cup of coffee, and updated my wordcount (I always forget to before I go to bed).
I look at my NaNo stats, and it says...

So i'm thinking, ok, ok, I just need to write more today, and I'll be all good. So I check how many words I need to get back on target.

excuse me for a second... *googling cat pictures*

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Are you kidding me? Are you freaking kidding me? I can't write 1,325 words in one day! I'm not a superhero. Or Potato! (who may or may not be a superhero... but that's another post. Or possibly my book for next year.)

Those graph can either be totally uplifting (You're gonna finish on November 11!) or completely depressing. (You're gonna finish in March. Grab your kleenex.) 

I mean come on: if my finish by approximation gets any later, I'll be fifteen. 

--PICKLE

When I can't think of what to write...

... I design a cover.
Its lazy, it's useless, but i love art in general, and whenever i can make something beautiful, it clears my mind. So if you really want to know, this is how i made my novels cover.

First i used sims3 to make a sim that looks like my character Solace, because, frankly (or whoever else)  i don't look like her at all.

The problem with that, however, is that i never made much of a physical description of her: all i tell you is that she's short, sixteen and has long blue hair. I imagined her having coffee colored skin, but i wasn't sure how dark it was, so i made a grid of nine possible faces, with different hair styles and skin tones.

I couldn't decide between the bottom middle face, and the bottom right face (i liked that her eyes were closed in it, but i liked the other one's hair better).

next i superimposed a supernova and text on top of my "finalists"

1. 

2. 

Since the pictures were really different, I made the text different as well.

I decided on number one, because it looked cooler, but i wasn't sure of the supernova, so i googled pictures of fire, and made the winner:

Awesome, right?

Now, if you don't mind, I just figured out what to do next.

--PICKLE

p.s. don't think this stopped me from entering the cover design contest.

UPDATE: Short with blue hair? Wait! that sounds like Potato!

I LOVE writing set in the future

Because then you can screw around with words. How often do you get to write this paragraph:

"She was ten years old again, back home in Cyclone Town. The wars hadn’t touched this part of the Northern American Conglomerate as hard as the costal territories, like Vermaineshire, or the Californias yet, but they were still feeling the squeeze. "

If you couldn't tell, I made the entire continent (except half of Canada I think) nto one big super country. Then I split California up into parts, (I'm thinking, North, South, and Baja- Mexico's part of the NAC) and combined Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire. Genius isn't it?

--PICKLE

Hi there!

I'm Pickle, hello.
The fact that I am writing this post now (instead of my novel) just proves how serious i am about doing this blog.
Welcome! My BFFEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE (Best Friend Forever Ever Ever... you get the picture) Potato and I will post all about our novels, and how crazy we're going, our novels, and well... actually I think that's it.

I can't wait!!!!


--PICKLE