Fear

    Fear is something inside all of us. It makes us human. It makes us real and relatable. But, sometimes we don't know what we fear until we face it.

    I am one of those people who doesn't quite know what I fear. I woke up around 3 am because of an earthquake. I woke up to the shaking, rolled over, and went back to sleep. I grew up living on the San Andreas Fault (we still live on it), so earthquakes don't really scare me. But, I've never been through a really big one. Maybe when I experience a really big one, I'll be scared.

    I don't fear death. I do fear injury. Car crashes scare me. Hurricanes are pretty scary and tornadoes are too, but they are also fairly predictable (unlike earthquakes which don't scare me). 

    When asked what I'm afraid of, I always have two answers- bees and thunder. I'm allergic to bees, so it's only natural for me to fear them. Thunder is my one completely illogical fear, but I can't think my way out of being scared of it. I hate thunderstorms. I usually have to sit with headphones in listening to loud music or watching a loud tv show or movie. I guess I'm also scared of crazy horror movies, but I can avoid those.

The Inner Child

    I was lucky. Growing up, I always knew what I wanted to do with my life. I've been reading since I was three, and I've been addicted to books since. It was only natural for me to go one step further with the one thing I love and become a writer.
    I started writing my first novel when I was 12 years old. And back then, writing was difficult because I had so many ideas swarming around in my mind. Now, writing is difficult because I don't have enough inspiration. One of the best ways for me to gather together inspiration is to connect with my inner child.
    How do you connect with the inner child? Well, my personal favorite way is to go to my happy place: Disneyland.

Music

    One of the things I try to enforce as a writer (that I learned from LTUE and that I hope my "A Day in the Life of..." guest series has taught) is that there is no one way to be a writer. Everyone has different writing schedules and different distractions, just like how everyone has different ways to inspire themselves.
    For me, I have to listen to music. Now, I know a lot of authors cannot listen to music while writing. Some have tv or movies on in the background, and some need absolute silence. But I need music to write. I can't write in silence, and tv is usually too distracting.

Currency in World Building

    Last week, Magic Writer shared another post about World Building, this time about currency. I got to preview this post before it was finished, and I gave Elise some tips for it, but she had so much more to say than I even realized went into creating currency for a book. And now I'm finding myself checking off things from her post as I'm editing Powerful because I needed to go back through and fix the tidbits about currency in my own WIP.

    The most commonly seen type of currency in fantasy writing is coins. The type of coin is not usually specified unless important to the plot, but it's also not the only type of money used because it may not be the most logical currency for your writing. Some societies may skip currency altogether and simply barter. Depending on what you're writing, though, currency may be necessary.

    But how do you decide what type of currency to use? You figure out which material is available in the region, and go from there. When someone mentions "coins", typically people picture metal coins (gold, silver, bronze, copper, etc.), but there are other materials that could be used as well. Wood, stone, shells, paper, etc. The currency has to be abundant enough to replicate, but not so abundant that it loses it's value because people can find it on their own.

Titles

    Over the past week, I've been brainstorming book titles with some of my writer friends. For me, Powerful came easy. The title was there before I even started writing. But for other books, it's taken quite a bit of time to name. I always give my books a temporary working title, but coming up with the right title is sometimes more time consuming than the actual writing the book part.
    

    There are a few different ways to title a book. First is titles based on character's name. For example, Jane Eyre or Percy Jackson and the Olympians. It's an easy way to label your book without giving any of the plot away.

Characters

    Why do we like certain characters? What makes us feel like we understand and relate to certain characters more than others? How do we as writers create characters that readers will like?

    Character development is arguably the most important part of a novel, tied with plot development. It's so important because of how closely linked the plot is with the character. They have to develop together. Which is why plotting out a novel is so hard. Where do you start? Characters or plot? It usually ends up being a mix of both.

    At LTUE, I attended a panel on Character Development. One of the first questions asked was where do you start? The consensus? There's no one way to do it. You need to know about the characters to develop the plot, but as you plan, nothing is set in stone. Characters goes through editing just like the rest of the story. They evolve with the plot. 

The First Draft

    The first draft of a novel is a huge deal. It's a major accomplishment for any writer to achieve. You spend hours and hours plotting and planning and staring at the computer screen in a crazed caffeine induced state. And writing that last sentence is when all your hard work pays off and you're finally done. You can say to the world, "I wrote a novel!" And you can share everything you've done with the world.
    But in reality, finishing the first draft is only the second step to writing a novel, and you're not even close to be ready to share your writing with the world.

    In high school, I ran track. I was a sprinter. I ran the 100, 200, and 400. The 400 was my favorite because it was all about pacing. You couldn't start off sprinting because you'd be dead by the end. So you'd start off at a more mild pace and save the sprinting until the last leg.

Famous First Lines

    The hardest part about writing a book is always the first chapter. We write it over and over again because there's far too much pressure on a single sentence to capture attention, and a couple thousand words to do too many things. It's the readers' first impression of a story, and first impressions are important. 
    Here's what a first chapter is supposed to accomplish-

• Introduce action and conflict
• No backstory
• Ground the reader in the setting
• No backstory
• Introduce an intriguing character
• No backstory
• Leave the reader wanting more
• And one last thing- No backstory

    Yeah, maybe I made a big deal about the whole backstory thing, but it's the one piece of advice you see all the time for first chapters. And it's also the hardest.

Take Care

    Today I'm taking a "me day" because I've started to wear down. I was crazy productive last week because I was riding that NaNoWriMo/writing the climax/caffeine high and I was crazy. But what happens when you spend a week staring at a computer screen writing and doing nothing else? You burn out.
   

    I made the classic mistake of pushing myself too hard and not giving myself enough time to relax. I can feel it in my neck too. My muscles are way too tense and it's giving me really bad tension headaches. And my biggest problem when I work myself too hard is that in my exhaustion, I oversleep to compensate. So rather than staying productive, my brain shuts down and it becomes too difficult to focus. 

    I was good for a little while because I'd reward myself when I reached my goal (which was usually writing a chapter) by reading for a bit or watching a new episode of a tv show. And I know exactly when everything changed. I went on Hulu to watch the new episode of one of my shows only to discover that there wasn't a new episode. I had all this excited energy to burn and nothing to do with it, so instead of finding some other way to spend my break, I turned back to writing. I got three chapters written that day, which is awesome, but I kept riding that productivity wave and stopped giving myself time to breathe.

Writing is Hard

    Any artist knows that their work is hard. Painting, writing, music, etc. These tasks are so difficult because progress is hard to track. Any designing is done purely in the mind, and sometimes thoughts are too convoluted to sort out and put onto paper.

    So many people read books and think, "This can't be that hard." I mean, how many times in school did you have to write papers and essays? All you have to do is keep talking but on paper. It's easy!

WRONG.

    First off, you need characters. Then you need a setting, plot, character development, conflict, resolution, world building, genre, etc. Not to mention somewhere between 50,000 to 100,000 words. And it all has to fit together so perfectly that the genre makes sense with the setting, the setting influences the characters, who influence the plot, which in turn causes character development, creating the conflict and eventually leads to the resolution. 
    It's almost like thinking forwards and backwards at the same time while sitting on your head and trying to keep all the blood from rushing to your brain while flying a pig when you can only look in a mirror so everything is reversed. Or a much simpler comparison- keeping the house clean when you have kids.

Preparing for NaNoWriMo 2015

    I know, November is still a week away, but I'm not doing a proper NaNo anyway and I'm starting a little early because I really want to dive into the end of Powerful. 
    Our apartment complex is celebrating Halloween tomorrow (and I'm super excited for this year but I'm saving that for a later post), so I figured once that's over I have no more excuses not to write (except maybe cleaning the apartment). I spent last week catching up on all my tv shows, finishing the trilogy I started far too long ago, plotting, crocheting, stocking up on soda and candy, filling the car up with gas for trips to B&N, and doing everything else I possibly could to prepare for November. 

    I found some great articles about prepping for NaNoWriMo. Here are the links: In It to Win It, Getting Ready, and How to Prepare.

Giving and Taking

    A few updates on my life before I dig into my topic-

• I'm being interviewed again! Yay! It'll be up later this week, and I'll share it here for all you lovelies to read about my ridiculousness.
• I'm preparing for NaNoWriMo! This will be my last attempt to push out the end out my novel. I've got about 50,000 words left, so hopefully I can use NaNoWriMo to my advantage and really crank out the ending. This may mean I blog less because I might have to turn off the wi-fi so I can actually focus rather than Pinteresting and Netflixing the days away. I don't know yet, we'll see when November gets here.
• I'm not sick anymore! Whoo! That means that I can get back to being productive instead of laying on my couch in the darkness because my head hurts and I can't stop coughing.

    Due to the creative energy I've got coursing through my body after being sick for a week, I'm pumped and ready to continue writing. It's exciting. As I write, I post my novel chapter by chapter on Scribophile for fellow writers to read and critique. I get lots of good feedback on everything I post. But what exactly does good feedback mean?

Staying Creative (When You're Busy)

    I haven't really been focusing on writing so much lately, and it's really hard on me because I want to stay as creative as I can while I'm busy. If I don't stay creative, then when I find more time to seriously focus, I'm usually stuck in a block. While there are many ways to overcome a writer's block, I'd rather avoid it in the first place. So how do I stay creative and focused when I'm busy?

    There is more than one way to be creative. I named my blog Hypergraphia because when the creative energy overwhelms me, I tend to write over other forms of creative output. But when I'm not in a situation where I can write, there are other ways I can funnel my creativity to keep it flowing rather than blocking the energy.

The Middle

    I'm hitting that point in the middle of my writing where I usually get bored and pitter off. You know, that almost halfway chapter of Rose where I realized that there wasn't enough to the story and so many things needed to change before I could finish, so I stopped and moved on to the next thing?
    Except I'm not getting bored. I'm getting more and more excited to write. So much is happening and I cannot wait to put everything into words. Usually I only get dragged into this kind of suspense when I'm reading, but the fact that my own writing is pulling me in proves to me that not only is this story is worth telling, but it's also ready to be told.

Better Words

    First things first, I have to brag and point out my word count! 48,635 words, and 16 chapters written! Just 18 days ago I was at 28,676 words and 9 chapters. That's almost exactly 20,000 words in 18 days. And I'm planning to get at least 1 more chapter written this week. So yeah, I'm gonna brag about it.
    Now to the point of this post- My last post was all about description, but I noticed that I skimmed over one fairly important and super helpful part of improving description. Words. One of the easiest ways to improve description is by improving your words. 
    All I said about that previously was to have a thesaurus handy. I've also found some charts that I like to keep handy for when I need a better word for those that are commonly overused.

And How Does That Make You Feel?

    In trying to stumble upon inspiration for this blog post, I found a lot of advice on improving dialogue. I thought about using that, but honestly I would have no idea what advice to give. Unlike description, dialogue is one of those things that comes super naturally to me. I get a lot of compliments on how real my dialogue is, but I don't really know what I do to make it so special. Until someone told me, I had no idea my dialogue was even any good. 
    And that's how I picked my topic for today- Description, my arch nemesis.  I could compile a lot of advice on how to enhance description in writing because it's something I have to work at constantly. Every few hundred words I have to remind myself that description needs to be included because if I don't, I'll forget and it won't get included. I am terrible at it.
    One of the reasons why Shannon Hale's books are my favorites is because of the beautiful way she describes everything. It's poetic and flows so perfectly. It's something I don't think I'll ever be able to do, but I'm still going to work at it so I can get better.
    

    This advice is gathered from fellow writers because my own advice sucks.

Just Write!

    I've been virtually nonexistent since my weekend at Disneyland. It wore me out. We were so tired that we came home 5 hours early. I'd like to say that since then I've recovered, but I'm always so tired that I can't tell.

    Since then, I've had a hard time working on my writing. Between all the things I have going on and my exhaustion, I've used every excuse I can to avoid writing. And that's bad. As a writer, I need to be writing every day. Not just thinking about writing, but physically sitting down with a pen and paper and writing words. So I fell back into one of my bad old habits of procrastinating. And now I'm working my way out of it, starting with a blog post.

And Now It's July!

    I love July. July means hot days and cool pools. It means smoothies and s'mores. It says prepare for fireworks, watermelon, and ice cream. But most importantly, July means my birthday, and my birthday means a whole slew of new books! Remember last year? You can understand my excitement.

    So while I'm excitedly writing and reading the days away, I figured I'd share some inspiration with you. 

June's Almost Over??

    The days are moving by too fast. Some days I feel like I don't have enough time to get anything done. There are far too many things on my list to do, and I'm still not sure if I'm making progress or if I'm just staring at the blinking curser on my computer screen for hours on end.
    This weekend was super busy because I spent most of it in the car driving to my cousin's wedding and reception. This cousin was my college roommate until I got married, and there was no way I was going to miss her wedding. 
    I also got a fitbit last week, and Husband of Mine and I are competing to see who can get more steps in a day. Whoever wins gets a dollar from the other person. We're tied right now. I've won $2 and he's won $2. 
    Between sitting in the car, visiting with family, crocheting, trying to get my daily steps in, and the wedding and reception, I feel like I've accomplished nothing for days. And the best part is, for the past 4 nights in a row, I haven't slept more than 4 hours a night. Yeah, I'm living off caffeine right now.
    Anyway, the point of my complaining is not to be annoying. Seriously, I'm really not trying to be annoying and whiney. It's to explain why my blog posts are still barely trickling in. As I'm still working on serious edits for Powerful, I find I don't have as much time to dedicate to my blog. If I have a few hours to sit down and write, it's either going to be for my blog or for Powerful. Which one am I going to choose? 
    So I'm here to say that I am still alive and still writing. I've got 500 words down for chapter 8 (which is me splitting the earlier version of chapter 7 into two chapters and expanding on the big reveal at the end) which is some serious progress. Today, I'm hoping to sit down and get a ton more done. I want this chapter to be finished by tomorrow (Wednesday by the latest).
    But since I already started this blog post, I figured I should at least get something down on it. So I compiled some inspiration for you.

Worldbuilding With Magic

    For those of you who have been reading along, my friend Elise (Magic Writer) has been doing a series on Worldbuilding, and I've been promoting for her and sharing some of my own tidbits. I really like the series she's done because I've never been able to actually put into words how I build worlds, I just do it. It's nice to have guidelines to follow to see how well I did for my writing. Sometimes I discover things I missed, and I've found myself being more assertive about making decisions because they have to be made at some point.
    For example, as I was reading through some of Elise's advice, I discovered that I hadn't yet thought about the capitol cities of each kingdom. As I was going through chapter 7, it talks about how the people know Luzi so well, but no one knows Kyla. One of my readers asked how the people knew Luzi. Well, I decided that Varn and Laeto are very similar because their capitol cities (and castles) are major areas where many people go to visit. The royal families are well known and visit the general public often. Their castles are tourist attractions, and parts are open to the general public. In my last post I talked about the Varnan castle and how the center is a giant temple where many people go to pray. One of Aya's brothers is a priest there. Laeto's capital city is a market, very similar to Central City. The castle is in the center of a giant town and many people go inside the castle to meet with the royal family, give them gifts, and ask for help. Tykra and Zetalon, however, are different. Their castles are not parts of major cities, and are very isolated. The royal families rarely affiliate with their subjects. It's something that Kyla appreciated as a child, but grows to dislike. It makes sense for the story.