NaNo Rebel

So this year’s NaNo is not going as planned for me 😛 I’m only 6K in. I suppose I’ve been pretty preoccupied with other life changes.

Anyway, I decided to switch to writing my “new” draft of Scarlet Daughter for NaNo instead of the fantasy story I had. Mainly, my fantasy story hadn’t been planned out yet (much), especially in the world building area and that was posing a major problem when I was writing. I’m not giving up on that story–I’ll probably try it again next NaNo.

I believe this is like the third time I’ve written the same story for NaNo. The first year, it was almost a completely different book and I only made it halfway. The second year, I wrote the second “half” of it but again, it’s really gone in a different direction. Last year I wrote Lady of the Snow and made it probably 3/4 of the way through the book (although that one will also be heavily revised as well–the story’s changed so much there too). And this year, it’s the new draft of Scarlet Daughter. The funny part is that the title has changed every time I’ve done NaNo too. 😛

So I may be a bit of a NaNo rebel switching midstream. But oh well. The 6K came easier than the 3K for my fantasy. I may be lucky to hit the 25K mark by the end of the month but that’s OK. I’ll be that much closer to sending the draft out to beta readers. 🙂

World Building

So, I’m facing a new challenge this NaNo season. As I’ve only ever written historical, or historical fantasy set in this world, I’ve never had to envision a completely different earth. Until now 😛

My NaNo project for this year is essentially set on a place similar to Earth, since I’m pretty much borrowing aspects of different cultures for my planet. But I had to draw a map to see how the planet’s set up. I’m not an artist by any means so this proved challenging. However I did end up sketching a rough outline of the continents and some of the geological features of the main continent on notebook paper. One continent looks eerily like the Arabian peninsula although I really wasn’t planning it to look that way–it just happened. Then I have some islands that are supposed to be similar to England, with some having the ragged coastline of the Scandinavian countries.

 Maybe I’ll go out and buy some graphing paper and attempt to make the countries a little more…realistic looking, rather than blobs on paper. But for now it works.

If you’ve ever come up with a different world, have you ever drawn maps for it or do you just view it in your brain?

BTW, I finally decided on a title. Ready….

Beyond the Dark Divide.

That may change eventually too, but I’m more satisfied with it than I was with any of the other ones I came up with.

More Titles!

Aren’t you excited? 😛 Anyway I came up with a few more–ones that I like better than the previous set.

These are in no particular order as I like them all about the same.

1. Beyond the Dark Divide
2. Imprisoned Hope
3. The Edge of a Dream
4. Dreaming of Destiny

The first one may not seem like it would fit, but I thought of all sorts of nifty symbolism for it, the divide being that which separates dream from reality as well as the “divide” or wall that keeps my MC physically imprisoned.

But I like the others too! Sigh. Well at least it varied beyond the whole “dream” title.

Title Woes

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before how I struggle with coming up titles for my WiPs. Last year for NaNo was the only exception that I came up with a rather awesome title (or at least I thought so anyway).

This year I am having the hardest time. Ive even gone and done random title generators in the hope that something comes up. The story itself is fairly simple sounding…a princess is locked away from the world by her tyrannical father and then she meets her “true love” in her dreams. Of course there’s a lot more to this–part of the story being that the two are the key in breaking her father’s hold on the kingdom and essentially the world–yet I cannot come up with anything. My sister came up with some that I’m OK with, yet I keep going back and forth between like five titles. Here’s the list, in order of how I like them:

1. The Dreaming Princess
2. Dream Away
3. Dream Whispers
4. Midnight Lullaby (don’t know if it has anything to do with the plot but I like the title)
5. Dream Lullaby

As you can tell, they mostly have to do with dreams 😛 Anyway…wondering if I’m going on the right path with this? Argh. Please let me know which title, if any, you like. I’m also willing–OK, begging really–for any suggestions.