Sequels

Normally, I try to stay away from sequels. Mostly because real sequels are just cop-outs. They're generally just throwing new drama into a plot that's already been tied up with an elaborate bow. So the sequel becomes like confetti on top of the bow, which just makes it look excessive, or a second bow on top of the bow, which just makes the whole thing look stupid.

But if you're tired of metaphors, I'll stop talking about bows. The point I'm trying to make is that good sequels shouldn't really be called 'sequels' at all. They're the kind where the original story isn't entirely tied up, and you need more story to resolve the conflict. Those are the kinds of sequels I like, and there are often multiples of that kind of sequel. Those kinds of sequels make up trilogies and quartets.

Why am I talking about sequels all of a sudden? I'm working on a sequel to The End... as I use this to procrastinate from actually writing it. (Ironic, really. I started this blog to talk about writing, and it's ended up as somewhere I can procrastinate from writing by talking about it. I never think to post here when I'm not writing....) And some of the time, this sequel is being stupid and obnoxious. Actually, all of the time, so far, this sequel is being stupid and obnoxious. But if/when I finish it, it will resolve that ambiguous ending for you.

I mean, if you want the ending resolved for you at all. I wouldn't.

The Worst Month in the Best Possible Way: November

Goddess, I hate November. Especially since I've jumped on the crazy NaNoWriMo bandwagon, it's probably the busiest month of all twelve. Also, probably because it's already the busiest time of my year, I come up with tons of inspiration for stories and interest in keeping up with my TV shows and the desire to catch up on tons of great shippy fanfiction that I follow inconsistently at other times of the year. Actually, all of that is probably just my procrastination talking. Still, why couldn't November, like, be a bunch of months? Why couldn't the play happen in November, and NaNoWriMo in December? And all this inspiration for stories that aren't my NaNoNovel come to me in that awkward time after the play, but before the musical? WHY MUST EVERYTHING HAPPEN ALL AT ONCE?

Anyway, enough of this rant. I have to get back to procrastinating, after all. Heaven knows I wouldn't want to procrastinate my procrastinating by talking about it. So, instead, I'll avoid getting to a reasonable wordcount for NaNoWriMo for tonight and instead go read some of my Teslen fiction. Because everyone loves Teslen.

November is fast approaching

Wow. I can't believe it, but November is almost here. That is more than a little bit terrifying. For me, November is going to be a particularly huge month this year. First of all, I have to get all of my application to Carleton by November 15th. Secondly, it's November, which means NaNoWriMo, of course! This year, I'm going to shoot for 75k, even though, yes, that is in fact fairly ridiculous. Last year, I got to 60k without too much overt effort. I scraped most of it, but I knew where I was going -- so it made it worth it, of course!

In preparation for November, I am going to read over Strange book 1, mostly (though of course I would never admit this :P) so that I can remember what my characters are like, and what plots I've already figured out. Anyway, I'll probably be posting here sporadically again while I'm procrastinating from writing in November!

NaNoWriMo

Yeah, so I've officially decided as of about thirty seconds ago that I'm going to do it again this year. I can totally get in the habit of writing 2k words per day, right? That's not a big deal, right? I mean at the rate it's getting worse (which it really isn't, I have to say), then school work isn't going to be anything of a problem. And even if the play is something like a problem (which I honestly doubt it will be because I managed around it last year and I didn't have any faith in myself from previous experience to count on), then I still have half a month to finish the 50k.

But really, apart from saying this is absolutely something I'm doing again, I wanted to talk a little bit about what I'm going to be doing. I'm pretty confident that I'll be writing the second part to Strange. (I have another post explaining what on earth that is.) I say that this counts because it'll eventually be its own book, even if I have already written over 100k words for the whole story. So, for those of you who know -- almost another quarter of the whole entire story will be out soon! :D

Strange

I suppose that I should probably take the time to explain Strange, before I start talking about it and confusing the heck out of everyone.

Strange is the working title of my longest, original WIP. The 'original' part of it is more or less self-explanatory -- it takes place in my own fantasy world. The 'longest' part applies to everything you could think it would apply to. I've been working on it for five years now. It's nearly 100k words long. It has a massively complicated plot that can be simplified into 'girl is fated to win a major war in her country', but doing so really loses a lot of its fun.

Strange is about a girl named Leyha. She was raised in a foreign country, because her parents' love was incredibly frowned upon. The two sides of her family run two subsections of the country right next to where she was raised, and have a long-standing feud between them. When she is taken from the only home she's known at the age of fourteen by her father's family, she discovers that she is supposed to possess a great power that will help her father's family win the war. She eventually gets fed up with the way her uncle, who has power over the throne after her father's death, and his lords are treating her, so she runs away to the other side of her family, where her mother is still alive. Her alliance goes back and forth and gets more confusing as time goes on, because her father's family is the one that's supposed to be the "bad" side, according to people outside of the country.

The fun part of Strange is that it gives me a place to play with the ideas of "good" and "bad". They're words/ideas that have interested me for a while, and I have lots of fun little things that I've done in the way of playing with the two ideas, and our preconceptions about what makes something good versus bad, especially in literature and film. For example, the Menla (Leyha's father's family) have their symbolic colour as black, and they are seen as the evil side by outsiders, but it turns out that they're much less restrictive and much more open with their citizens than the Pilo (Leyha's mother's family) are. It's a whole lot of fun, especially because good and bad become nothing more than ideas by the time the whole giant story arc is done.

Right, so, the reason this is coming up at all is because I wanted to have a reference of what it is, so that when I reference it later, you guys know what I'm  talking about -- or can have somewhere to look. Also, I'm bringing it up because I'm nearly finished what is looking like it will be the first of three or four books (probably four), because apparently my story arc is too big. 100k words, where I am right now, is barely finished the first half of the expositionary stuff. So, yeah, I don't know who would want to read a 400k book in one go either...

Anyway, just wanted to let the fanfiction readers of mine who may actually, on occasion, look at this, that I'll be working for the next maybe week or so to get this whole first part finished so I can figure out what I'm doing with the rest of it. So I'll be around, but rather sporadically, and not really with fanfiction all that much. Oh well. Sorry guys.