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!