November 9th Already? Seriously??

Is it already the 9th of November? Wow. Last week was kind of a blur for me–though it was slow, all the days just blended together and I kind of forgot what the date was…

Anyway.

Sometime later in the month I may do another little series on the Mythical Creatures of Japan, despite the fact there was little interest in it last week (the fact that my page views per day were hardly above those on days when I didn’t write a blog post at all, it kind of says something…) I guess people just aren’t as fascinated with Japanese mythology as I am! But I will continue in a week or two with some fun and fascinating creatures, despite lack of interest. 🙂

As for NaNo updates…are you ready? This could be a little long-winded, so feel free to skip past this if you don’t care.

{Begins long winded NaNo rambling here}

I’m doing good on the word count (slightly past the 16K mark) however, the story just doesn’t seem to be, well, flowing like I want it to this time around. I don’t know why, but the last two years when I worked on Promise of the Plum Blossom, the words just seemed to come easier. And the prose seemed to be better. 

Not saying there isn’t any salvageable material in Lady of the Snow just…well, there just doesn’t seem to be as much. As others have told me no writing is absolute garbage, so I know there’s some of this that I can use and edit to make it shine.

 Wouldn’t you know it–as I’m working on Lady of the Snow, I keep thinking of things to change in Promise. But I’m being good and not looking at it–solely focusing on Lady of the Snow until it’s done.

Yes, I know I shouldn’t be re-reading anything I’ve written at all, but too bad 😛 I haven’t changed any of it, just marked where things need clarification and examination. I already decided to make a complete change in one regard.

I initially had Kazuhiro’s family (Miyuki’s future husband and my second viewpoint character) welcome Miyuki/Yuki-onna with open arms (since she’s a human, at least physically). However I was reading one of my research books, because I wanted to look up some aspects of rice farming (fun stuff huh?) and I saw that it mentioned how young women found on mountain roads traveling alone were regarded with extreme caution because of the prevalence of the stories about them being supernatural beings (like kitsune, or “fox women”).

So probably around 30 page mark, I changed it to where the family–and the village in general–is a little hesitant of this strange girl found on a remote road. On the plus side, it adds another little challenge for my character–she’s got to gain the trust of the family and the townsfolk in order to be accepted.

By doing that, she’s got to act more “human” and by extension, this ultimately transforms her, making her realize ever so slowly that being mortal is a lot more than she expected. It’s one of those things that I wouldn’t have figured out except through writing–and of course, reading my history book and applying that one little truth nugget to part of my story.

{End of rambling}

This week doesn’t seem to be as busy as the last…at least not yet. Still planning to go to a few write-ins and hopefully catching up on some housework. Oh and hoping that our garbage disposal gets fixed since it’s now busted and using that side of the sink causes water to leak out below the cupboard.

How’s everyone else doing at the start of this second week of November?

Outlining Before NaNoWriMo

Throughout the past week, I’ve been revamping and changing my outline for CHRYSANTHEMUM PROMISE.  I’ve added more chapters to the beginning to better identify the close relationship between my MC Kaiyo and her mother; I’ve taken out a few characters and one sidestory that I thought would draw attention away from the main one; and I’ve added another character.

I’m figuring I probably should actually work on outlining what I’m actually writing for NaNo instead of the changes, but that pesky inner editor of mine wasn’t letting me 😛 So, the goal this weekend and the coming week is to get through most of the outline–at least to Part III.

I know I won’t follow this exactly–I always change something along the way as I’m actually writing–but at least it’s there to give me an idea of what will happen next. While I’m generally not an organized person, when I’m writing I have to be, at least somewhat. I cannot understand how writers can go without outlines–I’d be going all over the place. Perhaps they feel that an outline stifles the creativity. But each has their own style that works for them. Mine is the basic ever-changing outline.

If you’re writing for NaNo–or just writing a book at all–are you outlining it? Or do you work better without one?