I live! At least, this blog does. I didn’t intend for my writing hiatus to turn into a full hiatus, but I’m back now. At least, I hope so.
Couple of updates: finished my writing challenge! The good news was that I overshot my goal and hit 75,332 words for a total of 126,132 words on my novel’s current draft. The bad news is that I’m still not done. Hopefully I’ll be able to wrap it up in another 15,000 words or so… I really need to pick a week or two and do nothing but write so I can get it done. Then I can finally start editing. It was a great experience, though; more than anything else, I proved to myself that I can focus on writing and force myself to spew out words, even if they are generally crappy ones. They’re something to work with, which is a lot more than I can say for all of the half-finished stories floating around in my head.
Life-wise, I’ve graduated from community college and will be heading to a career school to get my bachelor’s soon. It’s an intense program, but I’m looking forward to it, for the most part. It’ll be nice to be done with school in a little over a year’s time. Not really looking forward to the whole job-hunting thing, but I can’t wait to move out and live on my own. In other cheerful news, I got to spend a week in Paris in April with my family for spring break, which was amazing. I loved the city and I’d go back in a heartbeat ♥
And now, art! I really haven’t been doing much art lately, between writing and other hobbies that have crept up (hello, roleplaying), but I have come across a few interesting works in my art folder I’d completely forgotten I’d done. I’ve added the decent ones to the gallery. Let’s not talk about the not-so-decent ones… I also have one sketch!
I tried to paint it a while back, but that didn’t go so well, so I need to try and color it normally sometime. It’s Elene, one of the most important characters in my novel and one who I’ve had a lot of trouble designing over the years. I’m not sure I’m set on this one, but it has a lot more of the feel of her than previous versions, so it’s certainly an improvement.
Finally, I’ve made a couple other site updates. I’ve edited the writer section a bit, mostly to update with more recent favorites and take things I’m not as interested in anymore. I also decided to clear out my links list in the site section; I’d rather stick to link exchanges for convenience’s sake. Let me know if you’d like to exchange links!
posted 28 May 2010 in site updates, life, art, writing, orenji pan, vacation. Leave a comment?
Did this last Sunday, for no reason other than that I wanted to draw Lei looking like the nerd he is. Came out better than I expected, though I still need a lot of practice coloring.
Anyway, the point of this entry is that I’m going on a writing hiatus for the next month. As great as it was that I wrote 50,000 words in November, I’m not even halfway done with the story. NaNoWriMo worked really well in getting me to buckle down and get it started, so I’m going to try it again with a higher goal and bit more time in hopes of getting to the end of the draft.
From 1 February to 7 March, I’m going to aim to write 2,000 words a day for a total of 70,000 more words. My best estimate is that this draft will end up at around 120,000 words, and I’d like to just buckle down and finish it so I can start on the long editing process.
Of course, I’ll still drop in now and then with a new doodle I’ve done or just to give an update, but other than that, I’m hoping to have a writing-filled February. Wish me luck!
posted 31 January 2010 in site updates, art, writing. 2 comments.
Hello, my neglected blog, and happy new year to you. I’ve been remiss in updating here lately, but hopefully the huge update in the gallery has remedied this. I have eight new artworks from the past two months, all doodles that turned into “hey why don’t I try to ink this? hey this looks okay, why don’t I try to color this?”
Joking aside, I can definitely see improvement in my artwork. I still have a long way to go before I can consider myself anything close to good, but I have a better grasp of anatomy and shading than I did before. I can already look at artwork from 3-4 months ago and think it looks awful, so with more time I’ll probably improve more. Until then, though, I have to practice!
posted 24 January 2010 in site updates, art. Leave a comment?
50698 / 50000 words. 101% done!
I won NaNoWriMo! I won on the 29th, actually, with 50,423 words, and wrote a bit more the next day. I’m not even halfway through the story and what I have is pretty terrible, but it’s a draft I can actually edit, unlike the previous drafts, and for that I’m thankful. I honestly didn’t think I’d make it when I decided to do it the day before it started, but I pushed myself to write even when I had no idea how to fill the plot holes or get my characters going.
The one thing I didn’t expect to get from NaNo was the drive to keep writing. I have a good long ways to go before this draft is finished, but I figured once November was over it’d sit around and collect dust. On the contrary, I’ve been keeping at it, writing at least a couple hundred words every day to keep it going. More than anything else, I don’t want to stop writing now that I’ve found how much I love it again. I think there’s actually hope that I’ll finish this draft and be able to start polishing it.
I have been taking the time to doodle, though. This is the first artwork I’ve actually liked after inking in quite a while, so I decided to color it and it came out better than I expected. Partway through the story, my characters undergo a mysterious hair- and eye-color change, and she goes from normal blond to funky purple. I prefer the latter, myself.
Back to writing I go, then!
posted 2 December 2009 in site updates, art, writing, orenji pan. Leave a comment?
31391 / 50000 words. 63% done!
As you can see from my word count, NaNo is going quite well. I’m about halfway (probably two-thirds) through Part Three, and I think I’ll probably be starting Part Five when I hit the 50,000-word mark. I’m still pretty amazed at myself for making it this far! I’ve had a few days that the writing’s been tough or just not happened, but it’s flowing, all the same, day by day.
However, I’ve gotten to the point that my characters know more about what’s going on in the story than I do. I wrote a scene tonight that had no basis in the first draft or even in my outline, but it single-handedly figured out some of my biggest plot problems and gave me something to fill the gaps left by character changes. What’s more, it’s not the first time this has happened — the other day I was writing a tragic backstory that ended with the girl in question getting her revenge by sniping the men who killed her parents. Nowhere had I planned for her to be a killer, but it found its way in and stuck somehow.
I never would have gotten this far without Write or Die. I have a tendency to write a line, pause, and reread it and the past few paragraphs before continuing on. With Write or Die, I can’t even stop for a few seconds to do anything unless I want the page to turn red and Rick Astley to start blaring. It’s the best writing motivator I’ve ever had, and I couldn’t be more thankful for it. I’ve also really liked the new writing program I got, Liquid Story Binder XE, which is about everything I’ve ever wanted but never got with Microsoft Word. I’m definitely going to take them up on their November deal when I get paid.
Aside from writing, my life’s been consumed lately by VDex, which is an online, battle-less Pokémon game. It’s absolutely addicting and perfect for a Pokémon fanatic like myself who wants to catch ‘em all. (My trainer card is here — I’ve been a bit busy catching Pokémon!)
I’ve also found time to do a bit of art, mostly when I’m procrastinating on writing. Lately I’ve felt that I need to work less on improving my coloring and more on just sketches and drawing in general. I drew and inked this last week, but went back the other day and inked it by hand instead of using the line tool, just to get the feel of it. I colored it anyway, mostly to play with the brush tool, but I didn’t even bother coloring properly in the lines.
Lately I’ve felt like all of my sketches have been mediocre, and I keep scrapping them instead of trying to do anything with them. I think what I need most is practice, though, so I’ll probably work on sketches and simple coloring instead of full artworks. They’ll probably be posted here in the blog instead of in the gallery, hopefully so I can see myself improve over time. (Maybe I’ll even try my hand at requests for practice after NaNo finishes? You never know!) In any case, grumpy ol’ Lei was fun, although I’m not sure I got my own color scheme right. Lei looks good in dark blue, though.
I’ve had more than enough typing for one day, so I think that’s enough from me. Until next time!
posted 19 November 2009 in art, writing, orenji pan, websites. 3 comments.
