Ready, Set… NANOWRIMO!

Guys, I’m alive.

I know that my latest post is 1 month+ old, which is probably my MIA record in the blogosphere, and that the latter was a depressing short story, but I would like to let you know that I am perfectly fine… even very happy. Lately, I have simply been overwhelmed by Life, in beautiful amazing ways, and at this point, I’d say that I have never been so lucky. If I was not an atheist I would probably have thanked the Lord. But instead, I’ll just thank the universe.

Anyway, my wake-up call to blogging today was actually the realization that… I’m DOING NANOWRIMO THIS YEAR! (as you’ve guessed from the title, of course) After 2 years of no-NaNo, at last, I’m getting back at it!

If you are also participating this year and would like to be my NaNo buddy, my username is DaphLeFay and yep it’s obvious that I can’t change my username and this one totally reminds me of the ‘me’ that created this blog in the first place. XD

This time, the novel I will be writing will be different from previous years. The main reason why I have not been blogging for a month was because of my commitment in my university’s Performing Arts Club, especially as we were coming close to our big Year-End Production. And I’d say that this whole experience, which is actually my second time, although I was in a higher position this time, changed me and touched my heart like nothing else.

Thus I’d like to dedicate this year’s NaNo novel to my Performing Arts Club. My novel is called, you guess it, The Performing Arts Club.

Anyway, I know I have a lot to do now and those who are doing NaNo can relate, therefore, I’d just like to wish you all good luck!

May your pen never fail you.

An Evil Nymph.

I Reached 50,000 Words!

This is a special post to announce that I’ve got past the 50k words mark in my novel-in-progress, a novel I’ve been writing since the beginning of the year – yeah if it was NaNoWriMo I would already be past 50k well before – as those who have been following my posts this year know.

And I didn’t realise that my previous post was actually my 400th! A neat number 🙂 This is the 401st one.

Back to the novel I’m writing, it’s actually a project I’ve challenged myself to complete before going to university in July, and being on the 50k words line, I’m halfway through! Wasn’t sure if I should write ‘only’ or ‘already’ 😉 I just feel that the story will evolve till past 100k words!

It’s urban fantasy, an idea, complex and continuously expanding, which was planted into my brain since I was 13 but which only became a story in 2012 for Camp NaNoWriMo in August and which I’ve been writing and re-writing since, never coming up with a completed story. Until now. Now I feel ready to finish that 3rd attempted first draft of this novel! I’m determined 🙂

If any of you want to know what this obsessive novel-in-progress of mine is basically all about, you can check out this short story I made based on it, for the Create A World Writing Contest by The Dark Globe which I actually won: CLICK HERE!

Anyway, thinking of novels… I made a book haul recently on my YouTube channel! Here it is:

Enjoy!

Tell me anything in the comments! About writing, reading… whatever! Let’s chat 🙂

An Evil Nymph.

My Novel Is Complete But I Have Not Yet Reached 50,000 Words?

So yesterday as I reached around 46,000+ words, I surprisingly typed:

THE END

And I still had at least 4000 words to write so as to reach the final 50,000 word goal for NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo: It’s All Right To Take Your Time

We have only one month, 30 days, to write a whole novel of at least 50,000 words. That means at least 1,667 words per day. For many, this sounds like an impossible challenge. For others, they know they can do it, because they’ve done it before. And for a few, it is way too easy and the word count exceeds the 50k limit quickly.

But whether it’s a piece of cake or of rock to you, we all have this tendency of rush and urgency when it comes to NaNoWriMo.

Late For NaNoWriMo? No Worries!

On the 1st November, instead of attacking the blank page and starting this ruthless challenge of writing 50,000 in a month, I finished my last two exams papers and ended up sleeping. It was only yesterday that I started to write, and my NaNo statistics are well below the expected word count… for the time being.

Are you in the same situation?

My Experience At August Camp NaNoWriMo 2012

The adventure is over. We, writers, are back to our normal rate of a hundreds of words per day instead of the massive 1,600+ words that we’ve had to write everyday for one whole month to finally win this year’s August Camp NaNoWriMo.

Hey, that’s mine 😉

I was lucky that the first two weeks were relatively easy because I was in holidays so I had a great start (4000 words on the very first day!). And when I compare this year’s performance to last year’s in November, I can clearly see a difference: I improved at that crazy thing! Here are my statistics:

My 2 Recommended Pills For Writer’s Block

So Camp NaNoWrimo is soon coming to an end, if you’ve been participating, we’re already in the last week of writing 50,000 words! I’m sorry that I did not really talk about my NaNo plans and all that, compared to last year’s NaNoWriMo, but let’s say that I got a great start, but since school started it’s been harder to keep up. I’ve got better statistics than last year though, so it’s all right 🙂

Because my life is all about writing for the time being, today I’m going to give you two tips, I think I’ll be short as I have to get to writing (lol), that is efficient for me when I get the syndrome of the Writer’s Block.

Credits to Google Images

For those who have already reached 50,000 words…

Congrats!!!! 😀

I’ve reached 50k words too yesterday night ^^ (did you see my winning badge on the right??) but hell, my novel is nowhere near ready! I feel like I’m still halfway in the writing. I reviewed it briefly yesterday and realised that I have much much to edit and all that. But really, I thank NaNo because thanks to this challenge I am now determined to finish the story and maybe next year or when I’ll be ready for it: I’ll go and publish. My dad told me he’d help me if I do. 🙂

Ramblings and Shopping Haul of a 16-year-old girl

Heya! My parents celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary on the 17th November 😀 yeahh!!

So we all went to stay at my grandma’s so that we would be able to do some shopping in town the next day. A new shopping mall has been inaugurated in October but I didn’t have time to go there because of my exams, but on the day that I was taking part in my last exams paper, my friends and I quickly headed to the mall to have a look 🙂 The mall’s called Bagatelle:

And today I went there for a second time… still for visiting! lol it’s far bigger than our usual malls so… I didn’t buy that much and moreover we also went shopping in town itself. Anyway still, I’m going to do a haul – ’cause I love those! ^^

Burning in Heaven: Here we go NaNo!

“Burning in Heaven”: the final title of my NaNo story.

A very useful exercise to all those who is participating in NaNo:

Know your story well. Do you think you do? Well if the answer is yes, then try to summarise your story in one sentence. If you can, you can proudly say that you’re ready to begin!

A NaNo Update!

Firstly before I go on with the point of this post, which as you can read in my previous post I promised to write, I’d like to share a wonderful, touching post on the ups and downs of friendship – written by Aurora here: FRIENDSHIP: WHAT IS A FRIEND?.

Alright now… we are approaching Nanowrimo… and as I’m a planner, I’ve begun to plan my story and I’ve come halfway to it 🙂

I wrote everything down in a copybook… but as it was a mess, I decided to divide my notes into chapters (I used to do that for fanfictions) by index cards. Each card is one chapter and on one side I write the chapter number, while on the other side I plot main points. This is an awesome way to organise NaNo. Get inspired in an Alexandra Sokoloff’s post: The Index Card Method and Structure Grid. 

My NaNoWriMo’11 Novel Idea (Part 2)

>>Part one HERE.

Angel: “I wonder what it’s like to be evil.”

Daemon: “I wonder what it’s like to be good.”

Human: “Believe me, I’ve been both.”

This resumes the whole message of the novel and this has been taken from my Idea Copybook! 🙂 It’s all about the Imperfection of Humans, and that we have to accept because no good could have existed without evil and vice versa, don’t you think so? I was reading some informative book about worldwide clans like Satanism and it said that without Satan, there wouldn’t have been any Church. It’s like the Yin and the Yang… both completes each other though they contrast each other.

This is a concept that I totally agree with, that I follow in life.

 Used to describe how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. Opposites thus only exist in relation to each other. (Wikipedia)

The background of my NaNo is very fantastical, full of irrealism, but I like to write things like that 😛

So Ere the Earth was born…

My NaNoWriMo’11 Novel Idea (part 1)

As you know I will be participating in NaNoWriMo this year for the first time (so excited!) and let me tell you that, it’s rather hard to think of an idea that will allow you to write it as a whole 50k words novel in one month.

So think Daphnee! Think!!

Since I was 11 years old, I kept a copybook (now I have two of them) in which I would write any idea, any writing inspiration that came to my mind. I recently went through them and wow, the ideas aren’t bad at all! In fact I think that the more we grow up the more we lose some of this sparkling imagination that we had when we were young. Today there is stress, work, etc to tire our brain so…