From this point forward the writing journal is moving to my personal journal.

I figured I spent all that money on the permanent account, I damn well better make use of it.

If you still want to read me, head on over to insomniac_tales. Leave a request to be added and put on the writing filter. If you're already friended there I'll add you to the filter upon your request.

I may or may not come back to this journal in future. For now, let's consider it defunct and ride off into the sunset.

This journal will be mostly friends only from now on. This is in order to protect my copyright. If you'd like to read my work (mostly nanowrimo novels in progress and snippets of fiction) please add me to your friends list and leave a comment here. I will add you back when I get the opportunity.

Please, do not add me if you don't want to comment on my work. This is mostly so that I can collect advice and criticism to improve my writing. If you have no interest in this process don't add me. Thank you.


Quick reference tags to all of the writing in this journal can be found here.

If you're looking for the personal journal. It is here ->insomniac_tales

In a very stupid/foolish/possibly brilliant move I am restarting nano.

The Romance of Coffee and Cigarettes does not want to get written just now. So it won't. I'm not going to pull words out of my ass for the next two weeks with little to no success.

We have moved on to Out of Doubt. It takes place in the middle of When in Doubt, my pseudo-serial project that I started this summer.

The words are already flowing, like honey, like butter. Bonus: the whole fucking thing is a dream sequence; so really, honestly, when I'm stuck I can go wherever the fuck I want to with this one. If Coffee comes back to me I'll revisit it, but if it doesn't I have my backup already started.

I post a warning every now and again, or a notice of copyright with notice of my craftsmanship attached.

Every thing in this journal is the copyright of Grace Singer. Borrowing my material without my permission is rude and illegal. Don't do it.

Almost every thing in this journal is also a work in progress, even those that are finished. My grammar improves with practice, as does my spelling. I try to copy edit my own work, but I always miss something. My beta-readers and the folks that tune into the journal regularly are used to this and hopefully gloss over or help fix it.

That being said, thanks for reading everyone. I've had this journal for almost 4 years now. Seems impossible really. 3 nanonovels. 13 or so projects. Crappy comics. Photoblogs of paintings. This journal wouldn't be half of what it is without your encouragement and advice and I really appreciate that you read (even if you don't always comment).

Title: When in Doubt: My Friend the Pickaxe Prelude
Type: Original fiction, work in progress
Rating: NR
Disclaimer: Copyright Grace Singer

( My Friend the Pickaxe Prelude )

Title: When in Doubt: My Friend the Pickaxe
Type: Original fiction, work in progress
Rating: NR
Disclaimer: Copyright Grace Singer
Note: Possibly the most fucked up piece that I've written yet for this series. I dunno why, but I adore it.

( My Friend the Pickaxe )

Ok. I'm asking a favor of everyone on my friends list and anyone on their friends list if you want to pass it on. This journal entry will be unlocked.

Comment with a prompt

This is my nanowrimo failsafe. In case I run out of steam or gas. I'll peek at the prompt list and just write. I'll give you credit for inspiration in the novel if I use your prompt.

It can be anything. Any thought. A single word. A phrase. A photo. Any little thing for inspiration.

Any time you think of anything, just come back and comment. I'll comment with a few when I think of them. I'll save this in memories under nanowrimo, so if you want to come back and add later feel free.

Pretty please?

Personal Journal prompts

Call it inspiration.

I've started working on my own writing again after taking a hiatus to work on other things.

I've picked up a few pieces here and there and added or formatted. Mostly editorial stuff. I added some to the Thirteen Tales of Trifling. I picked up The Blue Door (or Demon Diary as it was once called and the title will probably change) again. That's the one I really want to finish but the muses are kind of like, "nope, denied, you want this one done you do it on your own for now."

Maybe because I'm a huge clumsy ox I keep closing out of microsoft word or shutting down my computer on accident. Or maybe because the muses are still denying me my creative urges.

Thank god I'm an obsessive compulsive saver.

I did it!

I crossed the 50k line.

Jubilant celebrations and flagrant joyous ululations!

50,017 / 50,000 (100.0%)

And the story is no where near finished.

Hot. So hot it should have two t's. Hott!

More chapters coming soon.

I need to stop checking my wordcount.

Everytime I do I set another little goal for myself before I can go to bed.

I started at 45600 today. I thought, an easy 1000 should do it today. I hit 46500 and thought, I've made it this far with only 100 words to get to my goal. What if I aim for 47? I surpass 47 by a few hundred words. I'm thinking I could hit 48 in another 20 minutes if I really concentrate and stop futzing around with my heating pad and the journal and my mp3s.

It's also 6:45 in the am and I am a usually sane person of sound judgment. Where did I lose my mind? Was it when I jumped into nano this year with high expectations and a great idea for a novel? Or was it mid-Novemeber when the serious sleep deprivation started to kick in? Because I've been starving myself from sleep for this novel. The caffeine high is gone. The cramps are kicking into high gear. I'm where I was yesterday at this time, except my mind wants to sleep just as much as my body.

I love my novel. But I miss my sanity. I think 48k can wait until tomorrow morning.

A) At 45,600 I am now stopping. It's 7:10am, it's light outside, and I'm starting to see things.

B) Since no one is reading this as I post, I'm going to hold off on pasteing up chapters 12 + 13 until Monday or Tuesday.

C) I also want to take this space, since I haven't done so before, to apologize for any grammar or spelling snafus.

I'm spell- and grammar-checking as I go so I'm not catching everything. Particularly dropped words, which is something I do very often. Most of this will be caught on the painfully in depth editorial review I'll be doing once it's finished and put to bed for a few weeks.

D) I also want to apologize to my characters. I'm so sorry. I never meant for that to happen. But the muses started me on something and I ran with it. I blame them, they blame me. You should blame us both. They're the motor under the hood, but I'm the one driving this cosmic car crash.

E) One more apology and I'm almost done. To myself, I'm terribly sorry. I didn't mean to deprive myself of so much sleep. It's just that this project is so worthwhile and we know it. We'll catch up on sleep in December, or maybe January once we've officially quit our godawful job.

and ending on What the F?) The next 2 chapters have some racy material in them. Some of it may make you uncomfortable. It made me uncomfortable writing it. Please don't read it if it may upset you. I will put up warning labels when I do post them. You'll miss integral plot if you skip over it, but you could always email me and I can give you a plot synopsis.

My novel took a very strange and sudden turn around five o'clock this morning.

Four years passed in a single sentence.

Sequentially speaking, it's a hop, skip, and a jump away from Chapter Twelve, which is nearing finish.

Some really fucked up shit goes down in Chapter Twelve. Some even more fucked up shit goes down in Chapter Thirteen. These two might become one so that I can get all the fucked up shit out in one chapter instead of trying to bridge the two and splice in some happy business. Then again, Chapter Thirteen might just be a short chapter and Chapter Fourteen will fill that four year gap with some happiness.

I've finally reached the turning point in my novel. Well, sort of. This is where everything starts to unravel and I only have to go back and finish a few more sections of chapter twelve, weave a little more detail into chapter thirteen, then put them to bed.

I'm so close to 45k I can taste it. You know you don't care about your job when you're willing to stay up and cross the goal line you set up for yourself without thinking the day before. I'll just be on auto-pilot tomorrow, like I've been so many other days this month.

So now that I've taken a brief mental break from the trauma I just put my characters through, I think it's safe enough to head back into the trenches and get 'er done (as they like to say in the far south). Ciao for now.

Good idea: getting out of the house for a cup of chai and getting a little further in the very good book that I've been reading on and off since September.

Bad idea: starting work on another inspiration story that just couldn't wait until nano gets done. I keep getting these brief flashes of story with a weirdly upbeat and alternately downtrodden main character and this little fat kid side kick that she calls Fatty. I have to write it down. It's just too weird not to.

Good idea: inviting other nano kids to come and hang with you.

Bad idea: actually expecting them to tear themselves away from their nanonovels in order to do so. Or away from their everyday ho-hum Saturdays. Maybe I'm picking the wrong times and the wrong places. I dunno.

This is a slowly crafted lesson in defeat. I can't seem to get anyone to want to meet up with me and talk about writing or share bits of story. I can't even entice them with goodies like nanopins and stickers.

What the hell?

As for my nano, I'm aiming for 45k today. I'd like to have that much so that I can take her easy for the rest of the week and have the novel almost finished before I leave for home on Thanksgiving. November's almost over and I don't have too many more days off where I can write like a maniac to catch up on those days where I didn't write at all.

If I can hit 50 today, I'll be totally impressed. If not, I'll still be pleased.

The plot is getting somewhere now, as you can read in chapters 10 + 11. Though some unexpected stuff crept in there. I just need a few more chapters and I can start tieing together my subplots. I never expected this story to be this long. I'll be really surprised if I finish it before the end of November.

So I did something totaly decadent today.

I spent 30 bucks on a massage.

I got rubbed, oiled, and relaxed.

It was wonderful.

So now that I'm eating my delicious lunch I'm going to get back to noveling.

My goal when I started today was to reach 35k, but as I'm 300 words away from that I'm going to up the anty to 37k and if I reach that with time to spare I'm going for the gold... 40k. See, I don't want to set the goal high at first and then not get to it. If I work my way up in incremental goals I won't feel so bad about not reaching the ultimate goal.

And if I'm going to reach any of them I should stop journaling and start noveling.

Still writing. I hit a brick wall called sleep the other night. Demanded priority over story.

I'm trying to build the middle part up towards the middle end part which ended up getting written the other night.

Damn my inability to write sequentially.

I'm trying to decide what could possibly stand between my mc and the revelations about her childhood, because that leads to a relative downslide. Course, I'm completely fogetting the subplots. Like Darla and Hex (juicy) and Kinaea, Anikae, and Nikaea (delicious betrayal). And I could always go more into the older witches and how they ended up where they are.

I'm starting to feel better (I had a wicked head ache earlier), maybe I can get some quality writing out.

Maybe Chapter Eight will be ready to post by the end of today.

31,880 / 50,000 (63.0%)

*does the 30k dance*

The goal is 20 more before Thanksgiving. Let's rock this hip hop.

In an effort to fully procrastinate I spent about an hour redoing the colors on this journal and my computer. It takes forever to get the right palette going.

My compy is a little more blue than the site which is web-safe purples.

Felt like really decorating to go with the story. The red worked for Good Sleep, not so much so for Purple.

Now my computer is all ready for winter and snow. It's got that feeling to it, with an icy background, a close up image of a snowflake.

I'm actually doing really well with the story.

28,719.

And I haven't started unraveling a whole lot. For shit's sake, I introduced a new character on page 45 and it turns out he's very integral to the plot. I hadn't thought so before he popped up. Now he's demanding more space in each chapter.

As I keep saying over and over, I have no idea where this story is going yet. I'm just building and building, constantly surprised at what the muses give me.

I'm so glad I picked this project for nano and not the alien idea, which mind you, was also good but much more complicated and would require more than just a month of mapping.

Now, for a shower because I am skank nasty and then back to writing.

I need plot help.

My characters want romance. Or at least one of them does. I already have several sordid romances going on in the novel and I'm not sure I want to add another. If you're reading along, you'll know which characters I speak of.

I created a poll which is living in my other journal, since that one is a paid account and this is just my freebe writer's journal.

The Poll

Thanks in advance.

26,749 / 50,000 (53.0%)

I'm smoking. This is hardly to be considered a good thing.

I haven't smoked in weeks. I usually only partake in a clove cigarette every now and again. This is one of those indulgent moments.

Course, I'm smoking it at 7:30 in the am and trying to type at the same time. My friend Phil used to be able to hold a ciggy in his mouth and talk and chew gum all at the same time. I tend to subconsciously hold my breath when I'm holding a cig in my mouth.

See, I'm not an inhaler. Never have been. I hold the smoke in my mouth and blow it right back out. Cloves just taste good.

And they put me in a purple mood. Which is fitting for this novel.

Isn't there a song called Purple Haze? Maybe by Prince. Maybe I'm confused.

In any case, the novel is coming along nicely, but not sequentially.

All of my chapters are out of order now and I've been writing stuff that happens after chapter 7 instead of finishing off chapter 7. Which should be finished by the end of today. Crossing of fingers.

The muses have really surprised me in several ways on this project.

First of all, I'm cranking out more than my daily quota. This is nice. I've taken 3 days off of writing completely because of work related exhaustion and I'm not behind at all. S'matter of fact, I'm still close to four days ahead of schedule.

Secondly, the plot still hasn't taken a pointed direction, but it is definately building towards something. I have no idea where I'll end up. I have no idea where my characters are going. They've made decisions that will affect them later, but I have no idea how because it's all layered together.

Thirdly, the backstory is as rich as my backstory ever gets for characters. It still feels like plot exposition on page 55 but the story is going somewhere. If that makes sense. My main character has an amazing childhood locked away in memories she'd been made to forget. Some of my background characters have amazing stories of their own and they will culminate in some way to help the mc realize her end goal.

Fourth, I have 21 characters, 14 of which are females. Some of them play tiny roles, but they're aren't too many walk-ons. Most of them have a real hand in the plot in some way.

Fifth, and this is a shocker, I'm not second guessing this story yet. I'm really liking this story and the characters. I'm thinking when nano is done this might be something to work on and one day publish. The prose isn't half bad. Spelling and grammar errors abound, but the prose is nice even with all that.

Oooo. I made a banner too. It's on the info page. I was going to use it on the nano-forums in my signature but I think it's a little too big for that.

Back to writing.

Steal me and fill in your own answers:

Day: 9
Time: 9:55 AM
Word count: 21,461 of 50,000
Characters: 18 thus far (including the cat)
Pages: 56, double spaced
Font: Times New Roman, size 10
Caffeine intake: 2 cups of tea
Carpal tunnel: moderate, due to over exited typing and cold weather
Music: mostly Sugarcult, Jason Mraz, and a touch of Creedence Clearwater Revival
Plot bunnies: 3 in the oven, 1 ready to hatch
Plot twists: not many of those so far
Oedipal complexes: 1 and I'm avoiding close examination of this character for now
Deaths: 1 mentioned, not described
Guest appearances: 1, Lewis the adorably evil kitty
F-bombs dropped: 1, surprisingly
Other curse words: sparse usage in this novel of words that are frequently used on cable tv nowadays
Disappearance of the muses: that's why I'm making a meme, I've had several
Freak out moments resulting in spastic cleaning or hair dying: 1, hair dye, burning hot fuschia madness
Projected finish date: November 24th. Perhaps earlier
How much do I love this project: I really love it. I love Nano in general
Am I doing it again next year: most definately

11,509 / 50,000 (23.0%)

Wordmeter borrowed from: Zokutou.com

Chapter four is coming. I'm slightly ahead of schedule even though I slept through most of Friday so I'm trying to catch up and get my 3 day lead back up. Shouldn't be too hard since I have no plans today, other than a hockey game later this evening. The boss tried to call me in to work and I nearly laughed. No way. I've got novelling to do.

Is anyone else finding that this election is putting a serious crimp in their novels?

I'm so wound up I can't concentrate on my writing.

It took a little over a half an hour to friends lock The Girl and the Good Sleep.

Perhaps because my computer is slow, perhaps because Good Sleep had way too many chapters.

Therefore, if you want to read it, you must friend me and I must friend you back.

Next up, some posting from Shades of Purple.

Also, I had a tendancy to post up little notes every now and again between chapters during Good Sleep and I might do that again. These will be public posts and might seem highly disjointed without the bits of story in between. For that I apologize.

If you're still with me, awesome! If you're just joining, welcome.

Oh, I am very open to creative, polite criticism. So if you have anything to add, suggestions, things you like (especially things you like) and things that you think just have to go (not so much so) please comment. It'll be like beta-testing and I am very much appreciative in advance for your help.

It has begun.

Nanowrimo 2004.

It started a little late for me this year.

I'm already distracting myself.

I will post some soon.