Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Bringer of Jollity
Jupiter, the Bringer of Jolliity - Holst
Day 3 of NaNo, and I'm at 11,000 words. You get the idea I might want to write this book?
I wanted to apologize to anyone who tried to register on www.ianthealy.com in the past few days and got frustrated with the CAPTCHA system. After numerous spambots started registering, I implemented CAPTCHA but didn't realize the graphic version would be so damn hard to read. Therefore, I've replaced it with a much more user-friendly Math-based CAPTCHA. I'd like to invite you all to come back and try again, and if you haven't registered yet for whatever reason, all I can say is you're missing a jolly read in Blood on the Ice's first draft.
Written by
Ian
at
19:36
0
Critics
Labels: Blood on the Ice, ianthealy.com, NaNoWriMo
Monday, November 02, 2009
You can almost feel the current flowing
Far Cry (Album Version) - Rush
NaNo - Day One word count: 6173. Not my best showing on the first day, but certainly respectable. I'm off on the daily grind until next weekend when I have more time to set aside and write another large chunk. Until then, you can follow along on the progress of what I'm writing at www.ianthealy.com, as long as you're registered as a member (which is free, easy, and takes only a minute of your time).
Written by
Ian
at
05:55
2
Critics
Labels: Blood on the Ice, NaNoWriMo
Monday, October 26, 2009
Engines pumping and thumping in time
The Distance - Cake
Saturday at midnight, the madness starts anew. I'm reposting my NaNo Survival Guide for you here.
Ten Tips to Surviving NaNoWriMo
Speaking as a five-time survivor (and winner) of NaNoWriMo, I’m here to tell you it not only can be done, but should be attempted by anyone who considers him- or herself a serious writer. The goal is simple: between 12:01 AM November 1st and midnight November 30th, you write a minimum 50,000-word book. That’s all. That’s 1,667 words a day, or about 7 pages typed double space.
Over the past five years, I’ve learned some tips and tricks to not only surviving, but thriving during NaNoWriMo, and I’d like to share those with you.
1. Turn off your internal editor.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Let's play wild like wildcats do
Tall Cool One (2006 Remastered LP Version) - Robert Plant
NaNoWriMo starts in exactly one week and just under twelve hours as I write this post. Since I'm between projects at the moment, I've used the past couple of days to keep my writing muscles sharp by penning the first part of a Steampunk tale, which has been a recent reading interest of mine.
If you're unfamiliar with the genre of Steampunk, I would define it at its simplest as anachronistic technology introduced into a 19th-Century setting. Recent examples would include some of the gizmos in the excellent show Warehouse 13 (currently done with its first season) like the Tesla ray gun, the Farnsworth video communicator, and the Edison electric automobile. Steampunk is H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, Steamboy, Castle in the Sky. It's steam-powered mechanical men, airships like naval battleships, and ... rockets.
And of course, the stories are not simply about the technology, but about how the advanced tech has affected the lives of the characters within the stories, because we'd all rather read stories about people instead of things. Here's a taste of my own tale, with a working title of Ad Venus, Fidens (To Venus, Fearlessly):
‘Twas the day before Christmas, and a fine day for rocketry. The fellows and I had gathered in a snow-covered cow pasture to the east of Denver, with our needles of steel and iron, wood and bamboo, ready to challenge the rarefied heights of the wintry air.
Gwen and the boys sat in the wagon, wrapped up in wool blankets and scarves, sipping at hot cider from the Youngs’ stove. My wife’s cheeks were red from the bracing cold of the morning, but she smiled gamely at me as I set up my projectile, a Hale rocket with fourteen pounds of caked fuel between nose cone and the bell-shaped exhaust nozzle. The gantry was giving me fits; I’d dropped at least three bolts into the snow and was wet through the knees of my trousers from hunting for them.
Written by
Ian
at
12:11
0
Critics
Labels: Short Stories
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
You're an angel with wings afire
Supernova (Explicit) - Liz Phair
I finished the fourth draft of Pariah's Moon this past weekend. I've sent it off to a few select members of my inner circle for a final round of critiques before shipping it off to my agent. I'm hoping she'll find it both a pleasant surprise and an unusual change of pace from my superhero/cyberpunk action adventurey stuff.
With eleven days remaining until NaNo starts, what am I working on? Mostly busy-type work. I'm getting synopses (although I prefer synopsii because I love dual "I"s) ready for and Pariah's Moon and The Archmage since I never got around to doing that before. I need to mail a hard copy of Archmage to my agent. I may just wait until after PM is ready and send both at the same time. Besides that, I'm doing some plotting work on Blood on the Ice, getting ready to start it on November 1. I also need to get my webcomic queue stretched into December, because I'm not going to be working on it next month, so that will be my project for next weekend.
Written by
Ian
at
04:58
1 Critics
Labels: Pariah's Moon, The Archmage
Friday, October 16, 2009
This ain't no fooling around!
Life During Wartime (Live LP Version) - Talking Heads
Breaking news!!
My short story, The Scent of Rose Petals, is scheduled to appear in the Fall 2009 issue of The Journal of A Thousand Faces. I'll make another announcement when it comes out. When it does, why not click over to their store and order yourself a copy? They're inexpensive and chock full of darn good stories (and not just mine, either).
Written by
Ian
at
13:54
4
Critics
Labels: Short Stories
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Come around to my way of thinkin'
Sister Havana - Urge Overkill
I've been thinking about plotting versus seat-of-the-pantsing today. I am, and have always been, a pantser. That means I keep plot details in my head instead of writing down and sticking to an outline. I tend to write with the major plot in my mind, but mainly focus on writing toward the next scene. I think ahead, certainly, in terms of climaxes and pitfalls and such, but mostly focus on the immediacy. What gets me stuck is when I write point A, need to get to point C, and can't figure out what point B will be. If I was a plotter, a planner, an outliner, I wouldn't have that problem; I'd already have points B ad infinitum worked out. I'm trying to plan my upcoming NaNoWriMo project (which I've never done before) because I have more gray areas in this one than I normally do. It's been, uh, challenging, to say the least. I'm working with yWriter, and hopefully it will help me to get my scattered thoughts into some kind of order.
In the meantime, I've worked out the narrative voice for Blood on the Ice, and to that end, I'd like to share with you these two opening paragraphs which I will build upon to create a novel:
You see that? The glint in his eyes? That's the cold, steely gaze of a killer. If it was ten thousand years ago, he'd be hunting woolly mammoths with nothing more than a spear and balls the size of coconuts, if coconuts were made of stainless steel. Our story is a little more recent than that, and his spear is a hooked stick of graphite with a wicked curve at the bottom, and although he's still got balls like coconuts, the stainless steel is on the blades under his feet.
I present for your consideration our hero, one Hamisch Hamlisch, the first line right winger of the Fort McWilliams Fighting Aardvarks and the owner of the most unfortunate name combination since Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
Written by
Ian
at
20:17
3
Critics
Labels: Blood on the Ice, Plotting


