Starting is hard

I think I really need to practice writing. I heard a lot of writers have a daily word count they have to achieve no matter what in order to keep their writing skills sharp. I think something of that nature is in order for me. I'll never start the story if I don't learn to write better. My problem is the moment the words fall out of my head and splat onto paper, it completely ruins my ideas. My rhetoric is atrocious and discourages me from crawling past the first two paragraphs. So I'm going to write a shitty, shitty version of my story to start, and try not to OCD over the exact wording. I guess that's what editing is supposed to be for. Grr, old habits.

~Koshi

Got a new storybook

I've been recently feeling like I haven't been spending as much time as I'd like on my writing. Of course I'm a student first but I do have lots of gaps that I could work on it. I've recently got a tiny little black notebook which in all its adorableness has helped spur me towards brainstorming at least. Although I really want to get past the first stage quickly, and I have my deity history pretty well sorted out, I'm still unsure what the main character's role will be in the plot.
I've got a slew of interesting secondary characters and I know what I want driving the story, more or less at least, but finding out exactly from where and to where my characters are going is a little difficult. Also I'm unsure of my main character and whether or not I want him to be Kalen anymore. I like his character as well as all the other heroes I've created but unfortunately I don't know if they go along with my current plot. I've been back and forth on this for a while but I guess this is the problem with creating characters before creating a story. Hm, maybe I'll just save it for later.
One thing I just realised I might have been doing is trying to cram all of my thoughts and story ideas into one book. Or one story rather. But that may make it so that there is too many driving forces and the story isn't focused. Well, I'll see what I can do but I think I'll brainstorm a little more for now. Haven't used these bloggs in ages. Wow.

~K

Also just wanted to comment on the irony that I said I'd stick with that plot thread I created god knows how long ago. Whelp, live and learn

Just wanted to post

    I haven't gotten much further in the story, no surprise there, but I sort of wanted to get into the habit of posting on this blog regularly. It's a little sad when you have a blog and only update it five times a year. Well... maybe it's even worse to even have a blog in the first place...
    Well, either way, I decided to be at least a little more dedicated to posting here. Particularly because nobody reads this. It's surprisingly lovely. I guess I can see the appeal of people posting their diaries online. I myself aren't really into divulging every gruesome detail of my personal life. But then, I've always been more of a personal sort.
   I just have to mention that I'm listening to Elvis' Rocking Around the Christmas Tree. It has to be one of my favorite Christmas songs. Not that that's a huge achievement seeing as I hate most other carols simply due to the insane amount of repetition. But I just love Elvis in general. I seem to have a taste for retro music. It just makes me smile. And while we're on the subject of music, I've also come to adore Seal. But, this isn't really a music thread. I just had to mention Elvis.
    I guess I should rap up this post that was supposed to be only about updating. I'll be working on the story just after I finish up some pressing school work. I'll be trying to get at least a section of the first chapter finished as soon as possible. It will be a rough draft of course, but just to have something accomplished.

~Koshi~

Falling in love all over again

New progress!

    For some time now I've been struggling with how to properly start a story. It's always been a weak point for me. Quite honestly, I don't think I've even nailed it this time. I've got about 4 different ways of starting off my story, and I finally decided to stick with one of them, though ironically enough it's the one that's the hardest to follow the plot with. I chose it mainly because the others all involved introducing too many minor characters that would be killed off pretty soon in the book either way. It just seemed pointless.
    But now I'm quite happy with what I have so far. And as a hint that I probably won't be scrapping this one like so many other attempted starts, I've already written more than 5 paragraphs as opposed to the usual 2. I'm actually liking how this makes my character get promoted in rank. Though it means I'll have to kill off one of my important characters before ever meeting the. Can't say I was planning on that, but really it's the only logical way to go.
    One thing I'm a little disappointed at is that my background research wasn't as extensive as it should have been. I did know I'd avoid doing it as much as possible, since it is my least favorite part of writing. It's true that I do sometimes get really good inspiration by browsing the material--but really most of it is just little details that are kind of intrinsic to making a realistic sort of world.
    For example, one of my least favorite things to read is history. Ironically, I hate writing stories in present day and often making the setting of my stories in the medieval era. You can see that’s not exactly a match made in heaven. Also, though I care not a wit for military structures and weaponry, I’ll have to do a great deal of reading because my main character is every bit the military man. There are a plethora of little things like this that force me to do things I’m really not looking forwards to doing. Needless to say, this has been affecting my work efficiency.
    Also, I’ve found that I’m incredibly indecisive when it comes to ridiculously minor details in my writing. For an example, I can’t for the life of me decide what type of armour my knight’s going to wear. I could make him wear traditional heavy armor, the ones knights are most commonly thought of wearing, but that would not move my current idea in the right direction. It would mean that he couldn’t sneak up and ambush his team’s captors. However, simply leaving the armour behind is not an option because of, most obviously, the fact that he will be completely vulnerable to any attacks which is foolish. Also, the cost of such complete armour would be immense, so he’d be leaving behind a small fortune, one thing no-one would logically do unless the situation for them is dire, which in the case of my main character, it is certainly not.
    Leather armour, though much more practical in this situation plot-wise, would not make much sense realistically. Leathers are usually worn by archers, long range combatants, or poorer soldiers. For the same reason, cloth armor is simply unacceptable.
    Anyway. I’m just rambling now, but I’m sure you can see that I over-think things, making me agonize over seemingly trivial details. I’ve just got to bunker down and write the damn thing. I’ll never know how writers can achieve a word could over over five thousand daily. You’ve got to have really clear cut ideas. Something, I fear I will never quite master. I hope, if nothing else, that writing this story teaches me how to prepare for story writing in the future. Well, back to the grindstone. I really should be catching up on my other classes. Oh well, we’ll see how that goes.

~Koshi~

It's been a while

Well, sometime it seems that writing this story is just not meant to be. I thought, what with summer being a time of rest, relaxation, and plenty of free time, I'd be able to get a huge chunk of story done but it turns out I was wrong. Surprised? I shouldn't have been but I was. The main reason was that I had to get a job to sustain my wild spending habits--which ironically stopped after I got a job because I have very little time to spend any money seeing as I'm always working in stead of shopping. So I'm sad to say that because most of my time has been eaten up by either school, work or video games (hey, it can't all be serious), I have made once again very little progress in writing anything.
I had to revise my priorities a little bit. School and work come first as usual, but working around a lot of french speaking people has made me want to bush up on my language skills. So i decided to do some random studying of my own outside of school and practice my French and Korean skills. We'll see how that goes.

I'm Making Progress! ... kind of...

Well, I have to say this is probably the most work I've put into a story before writing it.

     I've made a sort of promise with myself to actually write a story and not abandon it after a few weeks of daydreaming about it. It is the same story that I was writing before but I will not be using the paragraphs I already wrote as is (shocker, I know). I've actually tried doing character histories. Now, before when writing stories I've made character profiles--you know, eyes, hair, personality etc.--but this is the first time I've written the character histories in so much detail.
     I got this extremely helpful Character Creation Form from Elfwood (Here's the link : http://www.elfwood.com/farp/thewriting/crissychar/crissychar.html). Its gotten me to actually write relatively fleshed out back stories for all of my characters, which I absolutely love! Granted, I've only fully completed about 2 of these and the rest of my characters are pretty half-assed--but that'll all change when I get my laptop fixed. Hopefully.
     I now realize that I may not have written about my laptop predicament. I've been meaning to write proper character profiles for all the people in my second book, but all the names and little background I had on them are on my other computer. And yes, I know that I said I would write the first book first and then write the sequel because I didn't have a clear idea on where the story was going, but I've got good news on the plot front too!
     I have finally gotten a rough idea for the quest my heroes will embark on. The problem is, the prequel's plot is kind of hazy, which makes certain details in the sequel's a little hazy. However, of the two storylines, the second one is the one that is more thought out. That, and there are a ton more characters I'm falling in love with all over again. So long story short--I like the second book better, so that's what I'm going to write!
     Now, what does this all have to do with the actual writing. I know I aimed to have at least the first chapter by new-years (Haha--that dream happened), but as it stands, I will not be setting some ridiculous deadlines that I know I'm not going to be able to achieve. My goal right now is not to do any writing really, unless I have a truly inspired moment, but to finish the character histories and brainstorm more plot ideas on how this is all going to work. Unfortunately this includes coming up with a coherent system of government for my world , which I know I will delay because even the though of doing that seems tedious and boring to me. Anyways, the point is to get the brunt of the prep-work done before I actually attempt to write a story so that there'll be less rewriting later on.

We'll see how this goes. It is exam season again.

~Koshi~

Not fond of Present

      Just as I was about to skip off to class, a thought hit me. I somehow find it unbelievably annoying to read stories in the present tense. I find that somehow novels, when written in this way, sound fake and forced and the story doesn't flow off the mental tongue as well. I was just a little curious if I was the only one who felt this way.

~Koshi~

     An elderly gentle man seems to be singing in the library with earphones and I'm not sure he's fully aware of just how loud it is. Small side note because I found it funny. And rather annoying, but more funny.

Just felt like hearing that tip-tappin'

     Sometimes I really have the urge to write something--particularly if I am on a computer that has one of the keyboards that make ridiculously loud clicking sounds whenever you press a key. I spend most of my time on my laptop and so it just isn't the same. There's just something about that sound that makes me think that I must be the world's fastest typist.

      As you've probably already guessed, today is one of those days, which explains the reason why I even bothered to write all this useless drivel. Usually when I get the urge to type mindlessly like this just to hear myself type, I just google up some typing tests and try and see how fast I can type (which, given all the random typing errors I make, isn't all that fast).

     The sound of typing for me seems to be somewhat therapeutic. I find the experience goes tenfold when I'm in a room full of people typing all at the same time (which is why I enjoyed taking the lab portions of my computational engineering course, though I never did any actual work in that class). Oddly enough though, when I am not the one typing, I find this noise to be rather a nuisance. Not that I notice it too much if I'm not in a perfectly silent room save, of course, for the sound of the typing.

      Anyway, back to the sound of typing. I find that somehow it makes me more productive and inclined to work and it also makes me more likely to concentrate on one thing for a very long time. (Namely typing). I am beginning to think that this is the reason that--though I do enjoy thinking about and creating concepts for my stories--I do not enjoy writing them. I am so obsessed with perfection and perfect plot and wonderful prose, that I end up re-writing the same sentence over numerous times before I am satisfied with it. Then, half a paragraph later, I realize that I can no longer use that sentence because it sticks out like a poorly written similical sore thumb. (I realize that similical is probably not a real word--and were it not for the word 'like' in that sentence I would have used the word 'metaphorical' in its stead. I should probably should have written 'it sticks out like a allegorical sore thumb' or something of that nature).

     This fact that I can not write with the apparent smoothness that I do when I write blog posts is what frustrates me to no end, and I postpone my jotting down of notes until a later date. This is a sad consequence of my laziness and unfortunately, because all of my stories end up being stored in my head, I loose much of the desired plot threads that I wanted to write up and sometimes even entire stories all together. (I know I can forget some of my stories because I remember my characters, and I remember how I visualized a certain scene, but I can not for the life of me figure out what the bloody hell they were all doing).

     Well, that just about sums up another one of my rants, or ruminations as I should probably call it, since my initial intention was not exactly to complain about my own writing habits. Anther one of the good things that come from ranting about myself is that I get the urge to do some story writing!


Motivation is great! I could have probably put it to better use if I didn't have a mathematics class to attend to in about twenty minutes. As it stands...

~Koshi~

Guess what? Exams!

Well. Isn't this everyone's favorite time of year. Yes I'm using it as an excuse for not updating, but at the same time I have a feeling like this is the time when my story will be updated the most. This is because of my tendency to try and to anything to get out of studying. I've already started working on the plot (you know--filling some loopholes, finding new ways to make my characters suffer--normal writer's stuff).

Anyways, I know (though you may not have been informed) that my goal was to get at least a full chapter done by New Year's, but I can see that dream rapidly fading. The reason for this is though I have a general plot for the Prequel that I abandoned my other story to start writing, I don't really have any details. And since really you need to know what kind of government your main kingdom has if its supposedly corrupt and the entire plot revolves around this-- I've decided to take a break from actually writing and try and do rough outlines for at least the first few chapters and of course figure out how exactly this mythical world runs.

I am actually considering not posting any story chapters on this blog anymore. I would like to dedicate this blog simply to the progress I'm making, since that's all I seem to be doing anyways, and create another blog that will have simply the story chapters. Obviously the two will be linked and anything I write in that blog will be commented and written about in this one by yours truly. Hopefully with this new method I will update this blog more often to ramble, and will not feel pressured to finish the story and end up making crappy directionless work that I'll end up re-writing in a month anyway.

So that's the plan at least. I'll be posting the new site up once I've got an entry in it. Don't expect it in the near to immediate future.

~Koshi~

It's that time again....

No, I don't mean Christmas or Halloween. I'm talking of course about the time where I give my many (feeble) excuses as to why my story hasn't even been started yet.

Well truth be told, it has been... kind of... Well nothing really happens in it, and only one of the major characters has been introduced (to be fair, he will likely be the only main character for some time), and that character wasn't really introduced so much as, well for lack of a better expression, flung into a heap of text.

My excuse is that I (sort of) have a life outside being a nerdy fantasy freak, which is basically my life as a nerdy physics freak. And as I'm not very good at being a nerdy physics freak, I need to study to not fail all my exams. (Lame excuse, I know, but YOU try majoring in physics and having a dynamic social life.... you geniuses out there don't get to try this little experiment.)

So, though I could post up what I've written so far, chances are in about a month or two I'll re-read what I've written, decide its a total atrocity and that I'm going to start over, and then come up with more excuses as to why the story hasn't yet progressed past some guy standing in a forest. (If I posted my written part, that last comment would make much more sense).

As it stands, I will not be posting the four paragraphs I have obsessively written. I am going to wait until I have at least finished the first part (not necessarily the chapter, but just make it so you don't sit there wondering "...wtf?"). Truth be told it isn't much writing to get that far, but again at my pace it will probably take a few weeks.

..... I have this ominous feeling that I really won't post until new-years....

ah well. Love and kisses,

~Koshi~