Update on Books I've Read

Okay, so since the last time I posted here are things that I have finished reading on the list:

1. "The Princess Diaries" Series -- Finally finished all 17 books!

2. "Shade" trilogy

3. "Star Trek: Terok Nor" trilogy

4. "Vampire Academy" book one -- Finished this one as well!

5. "Left Behind" Series

Here are other books I have finished since the last post:

"Roswell: A New Beginning"
"The End of Molasses Classes"
"Pukka"

It's not a whole lot, but I am getting books crossed off my list.

Book to Read

Okay, Words n Books put the challenge out there to create a list of "To-Read" books on GoodReads. I have my list on there, but here is what I'm REALLY aiming to finish by the end of the year:

1. "The Princess Diaries" series. -- I'm on book 10 and am now working on getting the supplemental books through the library. This series should be done relatively soon.
2. "Shade" trilogy. -- I have book 2 waiting for me at the library.
3. "Star Trek: Terok Nor" trilogy. -- Book 3 is on my eReader. I want to finish it!
4. "Vampire Academy" book 1. -- I just got this book from the library and am curious to see about the series. I may add more from this series, but we'll just have to see.
5. "Left Behind" series. -- I am 2 books away from the end of the series. I still have the "Before They Were Left Behind" trilogy" but I'll worry about that later.

So this is the start of the list. I'm sure I'll be adding more to it later.

Cross posted on One in a Million

Who do I write for?

Well, in answer to the question “Who do I write for?” the answer is simple: myself. I don’t dream of being published. (Though I must admit it was quite cool to buy the AugNo Anthology #3 and find my story in it!) I write because I enjoy it. It’s something for me to do to take my mind off of everything I need to do (and be doing…like laundry and other household chores). I don’t do it to impress others with my literary prowess. I don’t really care if people like, or even read, my stories. Sometimes I do post them on my LiveJournal. But I’m not entirely sure as to why I post them on my journal.

I guess I’m not worried about publishing my writing because I primarily write fan fiction. (Though for the first quarter of this year, I have written a majority of original fiction.) I know that writing fan fiction, I won’t even dare submit to an agent or a publishing house. It would involve WAY too many things to either get approval to publish or to change it to an original fiction, not to mention, it could be considered illegal!

I enjoy writing. It’s one of those things I can do in seclusion and not worry about what people think of it. That is, unless I decide to share it. I do tend to worry about what to write next, but then again, my biggest worry is actually FINISHING something. I think I am too much of a perfectionist to think something will EVER be done. Not to mention, even though I tend to write fan fiction, if you wanted to pick an actual genre of what I write, I write realistic fiction. So I’m telling stories about people’s lives. Sometimes that makes it difficult for me to figure out where to end things.

Do I write to carry on stories that I think need to be carried on?

Sometimes. I don’t think I have done this recently, but this was how I got started in fan fiction actually. I started writing Star Trek and The X-Files stories and most of those were written to either explain something the writers of those shows hadn’t explained yet or to actually FINISH the story that they left open. But as for right now, I write things that I want to write. Maybe they are strange things that get stuck in my head (“She’s a Dream” being about a girl marrying a Backstreet Boy and not knowing he’s famous) or maybe they are inspired by stories that I read (my BOYB [Breaking Out of Your Box] story is inspired by The Hunger Games) or maybe they are inspired by my own life and stories I think need to be told (“I’ll Never Break Your Heart” is one such story, though I have NOT met Brian Littrell...yet). I would like to think that I would read my own writing and that I’m writing things that aren’t out there, but based on what I’ve been reading lately (a lot of YA), I don’t know. Not to mention, I don’t really go back and read what I wrote anyway (except to revise).

Cross-Posted to: krazikrys writes!

Untitled

This blog is intentionally titled "Untitled" because that's what I want to talk about: Titles!

When do you title? Before you start? Somewhere in the middle? At the end? Never?

Until your story gets a title, what do you call it?

Where do you get your titles? Do they just come to you or do you have some magic words you say and your title appears?

So I know it's like three questions, but it's all about titles! So here's my deal:

Very rarely do I get titles to start with. I always feel that if I'm trying to write to a title, the story isn't going to come out well. Usually I get some type of title in the middle or at the end. But I do want to say I never title my stories and the reason I say that is because I have so many works in progress!

Until I title my stories, they are labeled "Untitled" (see my WiPs lists and see how many "untitled" stories I have!) I usually have names that I call them. For example, I'm working on my Breaking Out of Your Box story, so in conversation I call it my BOYB story. I also have my Keeping Warm in February story, which I refer to as, you guessed it, my KWIF story! Other "Untitled" stories I tend to reference by their fandom (as I do write primarily fanfic). So I have my CSI/BSB story, my Criminal Minds story, etc. If a story is for a challenge (like Fic-100), it gets called my "Fic-100" story. Of course this goes on until said stories get titles.

When my stories do eventaully get titled, I find myself titling them after songs. Sometimes there's a reason. For example: My Fic-100 story. I started on it back in June of 2006. (I decided that June would be a good month to attempt to do a NaNo because it has the same number of days and I was out of school for the summer, unlike November which kills me every year.) Well, I didn't get very far into it before I shelved it. I came back to it a couple years ago. Now here's the premise of the story: FMC is married to her favorite Backstreet Boy, only she doesn't know it! (I know...a little far fetched, but still way fun to write!) Anyway, between the time I started writing my story and the time I picked it up again, the Backstreet Boys had released a new album. On said album was a song entitled "She's a Dream." I found out that the Backstreet Boys actually co-wrote the song together. Upon listening to said song a bazillion times (seriously), the song was about a girl essentially dating one of the Backstreet Boys and not knowing that they were celebrities. Um...can we say life imitating art? So of course, Fic-100 story got titled: "She's a Dream."

So tell me about titling your stories.

Cross-Posted to: krazikrys writes!

Happy Hunger Games!

"The Hunger Games" comes out today. Well, technically I guess it came out last night at midnight. I'm currently reading Mockingjay.

Here's the story on that book, it's surprisingly similar to how I found The Hunger Games, except, instead of having to search for the book, I found it EXACTLY where I thought I would be. The only difference is that when I went to the express checkout to check out my book, the RFI reader wouldn't read the tag in the book. Therefore, I had to go to the desk. No big deal. As long as I have the book. I am currently 79% of the way done with it. I'm hoping to be done with it before I see the movie tonight. Yes, I am going to see "The Hunger Games" tonight. I've had my tickets for a week, and they were FREE! Yes, I got them on gift cards, so the only thing I'm going to have to buy is junk food! I think this is the first movie I have seen since May 2009 when I saw Star Trek at the IMAX. I'm not counting last year when I saw the Hubble thing at the IMAX in SJ, because that was a 45 minute thing, not a full length movie.

So I'm off to go see if I can finish reading Mockingjay before I see the movie tonight.

May the odds be ever in your favor!

March Madness! Or How I have totally lost my mind

WriYe is having a CRAZY challenge. Essentially, you can redo all the challenges from the beginning of the year. Here's the catch: you only have a week and a half to do them all and they can't count double! So, like a good minion, I signed up. Here's my list:

-- 01,085 / 01,000 - Write-A-Thon
-- 00,000 / 02,500 - January 5k Weekend
-- 01,216 / 01,000 - January FMM
-- 00,000 / 05,000 - MLK WriDay
-- 00,000 / 05,000 - Valentine's WriDay
-- 00,000 / 02,500 - February 5k Weekend
-- 00,000 / 05,000 - Leap Day WriDay
-- 00,000 / 05,000 - St. Patty's WriDay

I've already managed to get TWO done. But when you add it all up, that's 27k worth of words! Plus I plan on doing the 5k Weekend THIS weekend as well. I must have lost my mind or something.

Cross-Posted to: krazikrys writes!

Procrastination: To Be Avoided At all Costs!

I procrastinate up and down all the time!!!! In fact, me writing this blog right now is me procrastinating filling out character sheets about my novel. Ok, here goes:

Favorite Forms of Procrastination

1. Facebook Games: I don't play as many as I used to, but they still seem to consume my time. I think I'm only playing like 2 or 3 right now, but still. They take all the time I HAD reserved for writing away from me.

2. WriYe/Chatting: I lump all of this together because well, they are different forms of the same thing. I get on WriYe and into chats with people and there goes all my time writing!

3. Reading: Oh yeah, this is a big one. Right this very second "Mockingjay" is BEGGING me to read it. It doesn't help that it's due in 5 days from the library, but still. There have been times I have just wanted to read instead of write.

How to Stop Procrastinating

Probably the best way for me to stop procrastinating is having my Internet go out, which it does FREQUENTLY lately, so I end up writing SOMETHING while I am waiting for the Red Light of Doom to go away. Also the other way I get rid of procrastination is I go to work. Yeah, okay, me writing at work is procrastinating work type things, but sometimes there's not a lot to do in a small town library. Deadlines don't work, otherwise I would have won NaNo all the times I did it! Word wars seem to help, and challenges. That's where the chatting and WriYe come in handy.

Cross-Posted to: krazikrys writes!

A Writer's Confessional

There's really not a whole lot to confess about my writing. I don't write every day. I have "planned" my way to ONE NaNoWriMo win and have half "pantsed" half "planned" my way to a bunch of losses. I hate revision and editing. Well, since I teach, I look at them as two separate steps. I tend to edit as I go. It's revision where I tend to get caught in. Take my monster Backstreet Boys fanfic "I'll Never Break Your Heart." I have been writing on it since 2000! That's twelve years! I think I'm in version 3.2 or something. (Maybe I should start keeping version update numbers like software people do?) Maybe one day I'll finish it. I have cheated in NaNo, though nowhere near as bad as some people I know. My "cheating" consists of padding techniques. I can't seem to plot to save my life. I'll do character sheets until I wind up leaving large chunks blank because I'm tired but when it comes to plotting, I suck! Okay, maybe that is a whole lot more than I intended to confess.

Cross-Posted to: krazikrys writes!

Writer's Block Sucks!

I hate writer's block. I don't know of a single writer who enjoys it. But writer's block for me is something that I particularly despise. As a mom, I don't get a whole lot of time to write. It's usually after my kiddo goes to bed that I finally get to sit down and maybe get some words on the page. So if I'm wrestling with writer's block, it's especially frustrating.

I try not to let writer's block get me down. I have enough Works in Progress (WiPs) that I should NEVER have writer's block, but that is not the case. Sadly, I think I have writer's block on a vast majority of them! I think for some of them it's because it's the length of time that I've been (or haven't been, as the case may be) working on them that I have developed writer's block. Other's well, I think I just write myself into a corner and can't figure my way out of it. Well, not really. I don't think I've ever written myself into a corner, but there are definitely times when I feel like things aren't flowing. I think for me, it's the fact that I don't really get a whole lot of time to actually think about it. Instead, I've got about a million things going on in my head at once. (For example, while composing this blog, I am thinking about the load of laundry in the washer, the clean dishes in the dishwasher and the bills I need to pay and job applications I need to fill out.) There's not a lot of room left in there for an idea to spark.

This blog has 5 ways to get rid of writer's block:

1. Write! Well, duh! Tried that. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's really difficult when my depression gets going and I can't seem to think of ANYTHING at all nor do I WANT to sit down and write.

2. Read (your favorite author)! It would help if I HAD a favorite author. I do tend to read more when I don't feel like writing so I guess in a way this helps. I mean, for example, my Apocalypse Fiction BOYB fic came from reading Hunger Games, so I guess it's possible.

3. "Word-a-day!" Essentially it's prompts. Pick something and write about it. I've done this before and sometimes it helps. It just depends on where I end up using it.

4. Reread your old stuff! Yep. Been there, done that. It works, to an extent. Sometimes I am so disheartened by what I read that it makes my depression worse, but sometimes it's all I need to get back into the WiP and get back on to writing it.

5. Don't take long breaks! I try not to do this, but again, with a kid, it's sometimes very difficult to write. I may not be the most consistent person on the planet and churn out 1,000 words a day, but I at least get something written every month, even if it's only 3,000 words for 30 days. I think this is the biggest thing that has helped me with my writer's block: knowing that if I can't think of anything now, not to go off and forget about writing for the next year, but to just pick it up tomorrow and see what comes.

750 words has been great for me getting over writer's block. It allows me to ramble on about my day, random things, or my stories and know that I don't have to share this with anyone, or even tell anyone that I wrote it! It's kind of freeing in that way.

Cross-Posted to: krazikrys writes!

Shut up Already!

So Liz asked about characters and if they talk to you and how you get them to shut up. Well, I don't really have the problem of my characters not shutting up. I have the problem of them disappearing on me. Well, more like they take extended vacations and don't tell me. I have had a few times where my characters "talk" to me. Not many though. The way it happens is that I tend to get ideas for a scene. For example: my characters in my KWIF story were "talking" to me trying to get me to write the scene where they met. Now I was literally getting dialogue and everything from them! It was great. The only problem was that I couldn't seem to sit down and write it. They didn’t but me about it all the time, but there was this "pressure" (it's the only way I can describe it) to sit down and write the scene. Now that I've written it though, the pair has stopped talking. I was hoping that after I wrote it they would give me more to go on, but they didn't.

As for getting those annoying ones to quit talking, well, I tend to banish them to closets. Well, not really. Sometimes, I'll just drop them in a hole. I've only had this problem a few times and I've found that if I ignore them long enough, they'll eventually stop bugging me. Sadly, I think my characters don't like me ignoring them because then they don't want to say anything for months, sometimes years! Anybody got any ideas to get the ones who've quit talking to start again?

Cross-Posted to: krazikrys writes!

Same Time, Same Place

Well, Keri wants to know about books dealing with the same universe different story (SUDS - that she coined). I've only tried to write one of these types of stories once and it didn't work out too well. I've read a couple of book "series" that take place like that. I don't know if I would call them a series, but still.

Sometimes these "series" work well. It kind of gives you insights into the other characters that the other books are about. It also allows you to see the characters through different eyes.

I guess in someway, I'm doing this with "She's a Dream." This story is done in parts, each part is "kinda" a stand alone, at least I feel that way. But there are more parts that are written in first person as the FMC than there are in third person. But there are third person parts in there too. But I think that's the closest I have right now.

Sorry for the short entry, but I really don't know what to say right now. I'm still exhausted from the past weekend.

Cross-posted to: krazikrys writes!

Plotting? What Plotting?

Seriously, I don't plot much. But when I do, I tend to write lists. I don't bullet like Keri. Instead, I just open up a document (or OneNote...more on that in a moment), and list things. I've got a list (using Chaotic Shiny) of names for my Apocalypse Fiction. I've also got weapons and spaceships. I do tend to label this list because sometimes I can get confused. Like for my Apocalypse Fiction, if I didn't label the lists, the names could be confused for weapons or spaceships, and vice versa. I've even got a list of quotes! Well, that one is for my DS9 fanfic, but still. It's a list!

I have outlined, like literally with Roman Numerals and everything. And even then, snippets of conversations end up in the plotting.

Something else I have done is research. I know some people don't need to research their stories and I usually don't either. The only time I've ever had to research is when I am writing a fandom I know NOTHING about, or very little. For example: last year, during the LWS competition, I wrote a Harry Potter fanfic. I had to do some research at some of the Harry Potter sites out there to make sure I got stuff correct. And now, with my DS9 fanfic, I've been on a couple of Star Trek Wikis to help with some of the finer points of the race that I'm exploring. I guess the research comes in when I want to stay within canon of a certain fandom.

The other plotting thing I do is that I talk to myself. Yeah, I do that, mainly in my car when I'm driving to or from work. Sadly, I have nothing to record my ramblings so sometimes stuff doesn't come out the way I plot in my head.

Now, about OneNote. When I got my new computer, I had OneNote on it. Now I've heard everyone go on about LSB and various other writing programs. Well, for me, I like OneNote. In it, you can have several notebooks going on at once and each notebook can have sections with pages in it! I've got about 5 notebooks right now. One of them was for a training I did and the other one is for an event I'm helping plan, but the rest of them are all WriYe related. I've got one for General WriYe stuff. It's got tabs for Points, WiPs, WiMs, Goals, etc. I've also got a whole notebook for my WiMs. And when you copy and past from somewhere, it automatically puts the link in! (This is great for when I research stuff!) It also has tags. Now these are similar to tags on the various blogging sites, except they are more specific. I like the "To Do" tag. It puts a little checkbox next to whatever it is and when you do it, you click the box and it checks it for you! There's also a highlight feature. I've used this for a couple different things in my event book, but not so much in my WriYe ones yet. The other thing I love about OneNote, is that you can click ANYWHERE on the page and start typing. And then once you click somewhere else, you can move that text box that you auto-created anywhere else you'd like. The only downfall to it that I've found is that it doesn't count words. So it's not really great for keeping track of words written or anything, but otherwise, I am loving OneNote!

This is the most recent question. So I am now caught up!

Cross-Posted to: krazikrys writes!

Kick the Sidekicks to the Curb!

Okay, not really. But I don't tend to do a whole lot of sidekicks. Well, I do, but not as much as some other people. I do have a couple of sidekicks in my original stories that I'm currently working on. For example, in my NaNo from this past November, I have Rhys. He's essentially Damian's sidekick. He's got a backstory and everything. He also came into the story fairly early. There's a couple more "sidekicks" that get introduced into their circle, but they're more secondary characters, just there to complete things. Rhys on the other hand, well, he's a good sidekick. He does what Damian asks of him, but has his own mind too. He's not against telling him "No" or doing his own thing. He also knows when Damian is pissed at him and when to stay away. I think that's what makes him a good sidekick. Also, he doesn't go around telling everyone how great Damian is. Damian's not perfect, but he's trying to be a good leader. And every good leader needs a second.

In my fan fiction, there tends to be sidekicks from time to time. Sometimes they're only there to serve a certain purpose. For example in my one fanfic "She's a Dream," Jen is Becca's sidekick. Jen is the whole reason Becca gets introduced to Brian in the first place. Then she has the incredibly difficult task of helping her find out who she's dating/married to. (Becca is just incredibly naïve and has pretty much been a recluse for several years!) Yet, even though Jen is married to Brian's friend, Alex, and Becca has absolutely NO CLUE that she's dating a celebrity, she doesn't ridicule Becca for it. Even after she finds out the truth. She never puts Becca down. I think that's another sign of a good sidekick: sticking up for the main character and not putting them down. Otherwise, they probably wouldn't last a sidekick for very long. At least in my opinion.

Cross-Posted to: krazikrys writes!

Good Guys V. Bad Guys

I'm behind on my WriYe Blogging, so here is the first of 3 tonight.

Let's start with the bad guys. As a fan fiction author, my bad guys tend to already be created for me, or I get to create them myself! Usually I go the creating them myself route. Sadly, most of my bad guys aren't really people at all. They tend to be those abstract things like faith or trust or something like that. But in one of my stories, I do have a really awesome bad guy, at least in my mind. He is just trying to win this other guy over that he has had a crush on since he was little. (Yes, he's gay.) Only, he's going about it in the TOTALLY wrong way. Now, here's the backstory on the two of them: Ryan has a crush on Brian. (Yeah, bug me about names later!) Brian goes along with his friends and teases Ryan when they are kids. Both boys grow up and Brian becomes mega-super-star. Ryan still has a crush on Brian, but it is obvious by what his printed about Brian now that he doesn't swing that way. So when Brian starts dating Becca, Ryan decides that now is the time to get his man. He starts stalking Becca, hoping Becca will leave Brian. She doesn't. So Ryan goes after her and attacks her. All he's trying to do is get Becca to leave and Brian to like him. Like I said, he's going about it in the TOTALLY wrong way!

Okay, good guys now. I think the biggest thing about good guys is that they aren't perfect. (Unless, of course you are writing a story about Jesus, then He IS perfect, but you get my point.) And the other thing about not being perfect is that good guys shouldn't DWELL on their not being perfect. I mean, it shouldn't come up like every chapter, page or paragraph. Sure it should come up from time to time, but not ALL THE TIME. Heck, I'm not perfect, I make mistakes all the time, but I don't DWELL on them either. This can sometimes be difficult in the world of fan fiction. Since I write RPF (Real Person Fic), sometimes I have to make up the imperfections of my characters. Other times, they do it for me. For example: AJ of the Backstreet Boys. I don't have to make anything up for him not being perfect: going into rehab and relapsing a few times because he's an alcoholic did that for me! But other times, well, it's hard to break out of the fantasy world and make these characters NOT perfect or how we WOULD LIKE them to be.

Cross-Posted to: krazikrys writes!

Hunger Games and a story

I finished Hunger Games yesterday. It took me less than 48 hours to finish it. This must say something about the book itself, as it usually takes me about a month to finish a book. Well, that and it was slow yesterday at work. So I was able to sit there and read. I was done with it by 5 and I was regretting not bringing my other book to read for the last hour. But that's okay. I somehow managed to survive.

The strange thing was that in reading The Hunger Games, I somehow got some inspiration for a story I'm working on. No, it's not Hunger Games fanfic. Instead, it's a post-apocalyptic story that is possibly going to be a YA thing, but I'm not sure yet. The main character doesn't even have a name yet, but he's close to getting one. The story itself is only 700 words long right now, but some of it has been plotted, via generator, so I'm not going at this totally blind.

WriYe Blog Circle Prompt #2

This week, the question is: How do you name your characters?

You would think this is an easy task for someone who mainly writes fanfic. I mean, come on, the characters are all already named for you! But what happens if I want to put in an original character (OC)? That's a whole different story. For some fandoms, name generators/name books work, like Harry Potter, Glee, or any of the RPF (Real Person Fic) I write. The only issue with say, Harry Potter, is that you have to be aware of location. Harry Potter takes place in England, therefore the name should be reflective of the area and the time. (I haven't run into a Hermione anywhere lately, have you?)

But some of the fandoms I write or contemplate writing demand more than just a name generator. Some of the fandoms I write are complete sci-fi fandoms. Now, I could go the keyboard smashing route of Keri, but that doesn't work for some of the species within the fandoms. Let me give you an example: Star Trek. In Star Trek, yeah, I could just create a race of aliens who, although humanoid in their appearance have keyboard smash names, like Hjmlo or Gdymu. Add in a few apostrophes and you get something that looks like it belongs to a race in Star Trek: H'j'mlo and G'dymu. But I don't particularly care for creating races within the Trek universe. I like to work with already created alien races. This sometimes poses a problem. For example, I am contemplating a story with the Bajorans. On Bajor, the familial name comes first followed by the individual name. (Like in China.) But the names are not like ours. Some Bajoran names for your reading pleasure:

Kira Nerys
Ro Laren
Winn Adami

These are female characters.

Brin Tusk
Daier Halb
Edon Shakaar

These are male characters.

So I'm still undecided about the story I am writing, but I have to look at names at some point and make sure they sound "Bajoran." So this is a little more difficult than just going to a random sci-fi name generator and hitting "generate." The names have to SOUND like they fit the person and the race, as well as fit in with canon. 

I bet you didn't think I would have problems creating names, huh?

Cross-Posted to: krazikrys writes!.

The Hunger Games

So, on WriYe, everyone is going off on the Hunger Games. (Well, not everyone, but a bunch of people in my circle of friends there.) Anyway, I wanted to know what the deal was about this book, so I looked it up in the library database. I was FLOORED! It was obviously INSANELY popular, as there were over 400 holds on it! That was the regular copy of the book. There are about 100 copies of it in the 45 libraries our system encompasses. I looked up the large print edition and found that there were 125 holds on that one! (I didn't even bother to look at how many copies at that point.) So I decided to try the electronic editions. We have a free online library system, might as well look. I found that the audio book download even had something like 7 holds on it! So I figured I wouldn't be reading this book any time soon.

Last week, I was at Walmart and saw it there. I contemplated buying it, but I need another book at home like I need another mouth to feed. So I decided not to.

This brings us to yesterday. Yesterday, one of my kids received Mockingjay in the shipment. I know this is the last book in the trilogy, so I looked up Hunger Games again to see if it was still crazy like it was two weeks ago. It was. For some reason, I scrolled down the list and saw that some of the copies were marked "express." Now there's a couple things about books marked "express." "Express" books can only get checked out for a week and they don't get sent to other libraries. (That last part is like our DVDs or our loaned books at the library I work at.) "Express" is usually saved for new books or books that are INSANELY popular as Hunger Games obviously is. So I limit my search to my local library. (I work out of town, so sometimes looking at my local library is a good thing.) And wouldn't you know, they have 3 copies of Hunger Games and one of them is listed as "ON SHELF." All three are "Express" copies. This was a 4p that I noticed this. So for the next two hours, I watch this book. I go as far as to going to the online catalog and looking it up. The copy that is "ON SHELF" on my screen, says it's "Recently Returned" in the online catalog. This tells me a few things about where I might find the book. I look up my local library's hours, just to reassure myself, and find that they are open until 8 that night. So I decide to go by there on my way home from work.

When I get there about 6:45 last night, I head straight for the YA/Teen section. I look on the cart that reserved for "Recently Returned" books. Hunger Games isn't there! So I look on the shelves reserved for "Express" books. I don't see it. So I head over to the online catalog just to see who the author is. Maybe I overlooked it. I find the author and it still says "Recently Returned." I go back into the Teen section and look around. Before I even get to the cart or the wall of "Express" fiction, I find Hunger Games lying on a table! I snatch that book up like someone is going to take it from my hand, even though I'm the only one in the area besides the aid who is shelving books, and I think he left by the time I went back to get the book.

I go to the express checkout (because at my library, the only reason you need to go to the desk for the librarian's help is getting a library card, renting a movie, or checking out a book on hold) and find the few changes that had been made the first of the year but I never saw because my library is too small to see any of the changes. This confuses me momentarily, but I manage to get the book, get my due date receipt and head home. Yay! I can finally read Hunger Games and find out what all this noise is about!

WriYe Blog Circle Prompt #1

The question was posed How do you give your characters depth?

Well, this is not a very difficult question for me, but it is something I struggle with. I try to make complex and interesting characters but because I mainly write fan fiction, it is sometimes difficult. Granted, some of my characters are already deep and complex enough, as I am stealing ... um borrowing them for my own purposes. But every so often I put in an original character (OC) or on an even rarer occasion I write, dare I say it, original fiction! So there is the need to have deep, complex characters. If I actually want the story to survive somewhat (NaNo 04 where did you end up?), like this year's NaNo novel, I actually spend some time filling out character charts. The most recent one I have used is the one in the High School Novel Workbook at the YWP for NaNo. (http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/workbooks) Of course, this works if you actually figure out who your protagonist and antagonist are. Granted, I know some of these questions are basic and boring and don't really give you a whole lot of depth, but for me that usually comes out of just writing. Back in 2006, there was a characterization game on the NaNo procrastination thread. I spent ... My characters spent a lot of time answering questions. That actually gave me some pretty strange insights into my novel that year. Like for some reason, the male main character wasn't a virgin, but had only had sex once and realized it was a mistake and was saving himself for marriage. But also then there is also the fact that my characters tend to talk to me. That's how I realized that the antagonist in that story was REALLY in love with the male main character and not the the female main character. This added a whole new dimension to the story that I wasn't expecting. All these little insights that I have had have not only added the the characters' depth but also to the story in some way. As for my original works, well, I tend to spend some time thinking about the characters, and, if I plan to write an actual original novel for November, will usually start my character sheets sometime in September, at the very lasted the beginning of October. For me, having these already pre-determined questions help, but then sitting around and playing with my characters whether it be in a prompt or a question and answer format also seems to help.

Cross-Posted to: krazikrys writes!

Yet Another New Blog!

I seriously don't know why I do this to myself. But I have started yet ANOTHER blog, this one! I think I'm going to use it to keep track of things like the books I'm reading, shows I'm watching, and maybe some things I have written too. I am currently a librarian and am loving the job, but I find that some of the books I want to read and TV shows I want to watch are insanely popular! So I guess I go on the waiting list for them. Oh well. No harm in waiting.

Currently, I am reading a Star Trek book on my eReader. I actually enjoy the eReader from time to time. Especially since I can download FREE books to it!

I am presently awaiting "The X-Files Season 4, disc 5" from Netflix. I had checked this entire season out from the library, but found I lacked the time to sit down and watch all 6 discs before the due date. Therefore, I am sticking with my Netflix subscription.

As for writing, well, I am participating in WriYe this year and am currently working on about four different major projects right now. I've got a few minor projects to churn out too, but I would really like to finish these major ones, as some of them have been on my plate for over 6 years now!