NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo began Sunday. *sigh* I wish I could participate. It would be so much fun....but, as a student, I hardly have any time at all to write one thousand, six hundred and sixty six words a day. Maybe I'll participate, but with a lower goal.

NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. (Don't be fooled by "national"; last I checked, there were participants from the U.S. and the U.K. and several other English-speaking countries.) In November, every writer who wants to tries to write 50,000 words in thirty days. It's quite grueling, and very, very hard. Not only to crank out 1,666 words, but to accept how bad your novel sucks.

Every NaNo sucks. Just accept it. It sucks because November is the only time of year where quantity comes before quality. That's hard for a writer to deal with. I know I had to fight valiantly against my OCD nature to revise. Writers have a tendency to sit down to write--and then end up reading what they've already written and change a few things. That's fine, but nothing got done. NaNoWriMo helps remedy that; in November, you can actually get some stuff done. Then you have all of December to edit.

Here are the basic rules of NaNoWriMo:

1) A NaNo sucks. Seriously, it's a rule.

2) NO EDITING. I'm watching you. XD

3) No rereading. This helps you to resist the temptation to break rule #2.

4) Don't procrastinate. I guess it isn't a rule, but it's very hard to make up three days' worth of slacking--5,000 words. That's ten pages.

5) KEEP WRITING. People usually hit the hypothetical wall around thirteen thousand, and then again at around twenty seven thousand, and once more at around thirty three. The only way to get passed the wall is to just keep writing. It sucks :) but you can do it.

Other than that, I don't think there's anything else holding you back. Knock yourself out.

If you are a student, like me, and have no time in November to participate in NaNoWriMo, you can always do JulNoWriMo. It's the same thing, except in July. I did JulNo. I wish I could've done it in November, but fifty thousand words in thirty days is still fifty thousand words, regardless of when. It's still quite an accomplishment.

~TF

Mouse, Falcon, Snake: researching the elusive mouse

Started researching the spirit guide animals/totems. Snake and falcon were pretty easy, and, surprisingly, they already corelate with my characters in the dream. So those character graphs will be easy to do.

But the mouse, my main character, eluded me.

Apparently there are only a handful of spirit guide animals. Mouse is not one of them. Rabbit is--Little Sister Rabbit, she is called--but I don't know if I really want to trade my mouse for a rabbit. I really like mouse. I'm seriously considering borrowing some rabbit traits, but I don't know how genuine animal-worshipers would respond to this. I'm not a politically correct person, but I want my character's culture (or, maybe, her religion?) to be as accurate as I can possibly make it.

The mouse is also a very popular totem, and the falcon/hawk and snake happen to be popular totems also, so maybe that will work. Then again, practically any animal is a totem, even flamingos, which I don't think would really be recongized in ancient Native American culture.

But hey, it still may work.

Another incredible difficulty in researching the mouse totem/animal spirit guide is that it's terrible inconsistent. One account claims that mouse people are disorganized and happy among clutter, while another tells me that they are OCD neat freaks who have to have absolutely organized and categorized. Apparently the characteristics of a mouse person vary according to tribe, not to mention how it's changed, from ancient culture to a modernization of the totems.

Snake and Falcon were easy to look up, and I already have pages of notes on them and their characteristics. But Mouse...that's proving to be incredibly difficult. And, worse, I can't skimp on it because a Mouse person is my MC.

It will be an interesting story to write.

A New Idea - The Mouse, Falcon, and Snake Dream

August 21, I had another odd dream. It was the first dream I have ever had where I was a different race. As usual, no one I know was in the dream; they were all brand new characters.

It's a bit long to describe, and the dream itself was a bit bizarre to talk about, but I'll give you a rundown; my spirit animal guide/totem was a mouse, my friend was a hawk or falcon, and my grandmother was a snake. There was another man, a bit creepy of a character, with long black hair and a shrewd, pointed face. For some reason, my friend and I got in a fight, and he challenged me to a battle that night. We'd transform into our spirit animal guide/totem and have at it at midnight. In the heat of the moment, I took him up 0n it.

I went to my grandmother to tell her what had happened and to learn how to transform into my animal. She reminded me that I was a mouse and didn't exactly have a chance against a falcon. I felt very sick; completely forgot about that part. heh. Well, she taught me how to transform--it was really cool to watch her shift into the form of a slender snake--and I was able to effortlessly slip into mouse form--but the thought of going up against my friend was a scary thought.

Midnight came; I stepped into the backyard of my house. Looking up, I saw my friend and the creepy man with the pointed face perched on the peak of my house. I couldn't see their features; they were just sillhouettes against the full moon. My friend saw me, though, and without any preamble or introduction, he shifted into a large hawk with red feathers lined with gold. I had an advantage in the dark, but it still made me tremble at the thought of going up against him.

I turned into a mouse and sat hunched on the ground, a lump in the grass, shivering with fear.

Long story short, I never fought. I ran. My friend was impatient and kept missing. The man on the roof shouted advice and corrections, so the hawk got better and better each time he struck. I knew I was going to die.

As I was hidding huddled under a bush, however, my grandmother came and told me to turn into a snake. I told her I couldn't; a mouse was my form, not a snake. She told me to do so anyway. I tried, and, to my surprise, I succeeded. I was a long, slender black snake, and the crippling fear I had felt as a mouse was replaced with calm and careless confidence. As the hawk struck again, and was able to strike back. He was caught off guard, and shaken by the sudden shift in fortunes, he was reluctant to attack again. We worked something out and got over our differences, and were good friends once again.

The man on the roof was furious. He hated my friend for turning on him and swore that we would both be killed and transformed, there on the rooftop framed by the full moon, into a reptilian demon. It was quite frightening.

But we defeated him--not sure quite how, it was a dream and I was apparently tired of battles in my backyard--and we never fought again. In fact, we collected a group of other people in tuned with their animal spirit guide/totem to fight against people like the man with the pointed face, who would try to use us for their own evil purposes.

This sounds like a pretty good short story to me, and I plan on pursuing it. I'll be doing research on animal totems/spirit guides, nature worship, and shamanism. Can't pursue this idea until I have more knowledge on its main basis.

~TSF

An Introduction to "The Wordsmith's Forge"

Hello, everyone! I am a young writer working under the psuedonymn of Tina Fink. I write any genre (fantasy, science fiction, historical, realistic, etc.) in any type (poetry, stories, plays, novels, etc.). I'm a student, so writing time is a bit scarce, but with JulNoWriMo and such, it can still be pretty satisfying.

This is where I will post what goes on when a writer writes. Be prepared for seeing plenty of "I won four hundred and twenty three games of solitaire." Though I personally prefer Majhong. Haha!

Just some backstory, because, obviously, you haven't caught me in the very beginning. I've been writing since sixth grade and have a pretty good collection of ideas, stories, and unfinished novels. This past year I participated in JulNoWriMo, which got me a very good start on my book "A Demon's Eyes" (title subject to change). 50,223 words, to be precise, which is one hundred and eleven Microsoft Word pages, and one hundred and seventy six book pages. more than I've ever written on one idea. The other book that I'm playing around with is either called "The Revolutionists" or "Vita Nuova", haven't decided which. "Revolutionists" hasn't even been started, but I've been doing character interviews and character graphing for some time now. Still playing around with plot ideas. At the moment, I'm working on a long short story that may or may not evolve and grow into a larger piece of work. No title on that yet, but I'll get back to you. I'll start that thread pretty soon and give you a link.

Thank you for showing intrest in Tina Fink's blog! I hope that there are others who would be interested in a Wordsmith's journey.

~TSF