Finally Finished.

Yep. I've finally finished my 2011 NaNoWriMo novel! Now to figure out how to celebrate ... panini for dinner and maybe some new music? Choices, choices, choices.

Having just finished the story, you'd think I'd be ready to move on, get a break. But noooo. Frankly it's a bit annoying that I've already started a list of the things the story needs for improvement ... like changing the male main character's role in a group to something bigger, adding more chuztpah from the female protagonist, and don't even get me started on the things I need to do to the last scene. The list grows and grows.

But as next week is vacation, a major holiday, and I have two other revisions waiting in the wings, I'll give this story about Death, aka Moragayn, a rest until after the New Year to allow some objectivity to settle in. Then, I'll wedge the revision of this new story into my writing schedule and work on my To Do list.

Until then, I'll distract myself with holiday activities and some browsing on iTunes and Amazon.

New Year's Inspiration

Sideways Thinking at Work - Lightning Strikes

Recently, I was performing some much-delayed-research for my first story. I'd put off finding names for the houses for over a year and a half. (Yes, the houses have names. My story takes place in a time where large estates and castles are named. I suppose people may still give their houses names, but I don't know of anyone that does.)

Anyways ...

While looking up plant and tree names that grow in the Scottish Highlands, I came across a post about regions of the Highlands that are being re-tree'd, hopefully reestablishing native plants and animals. Made me wonder if they would decide to re-introduce wolves to Scotland, a politically charged topic there as it was/is here in the States.

Then literally, in my mind, I heard a voice. And no, I'm not crazy. I immediately took a sticky note and wrote down what I heard. I'd really like to share what the voice said, but it feels like a story seed. Something that would be fun to flesh out ... Scotland and wolves.

Lightning.

In the first writing online course I took, HTTS, Holly Lisle talks about how ideas come from lightning and from sideways thinking. I've mentioned it before here and here.

Lightning. Without even me calling for it. For a newish writer such as myself, this event is way cool. So now, my two sentence note is hanging in from my desk shelf, waiting for me to finish with these other two manuscripts.

Just had to share.

And for those interested in the house names so far ... The first house is named Faradach den Beithe, translated from Gaelic to English is the dwelling in the birch. The second residence is based on the Rose Clan Castle in the Highlands near Nairn, so I've used one of its historical names: Cill Rathaig, translated to mean the church at the small circular.

More on the Lightning Strike and the Unrealistic

Someone asked if lightning struck. Thankfully it did, since that particular idea has become the idea used in this week's HtTS assignment, albeit with some tweeks.

"Tweeks?" you ask. I changed the unlikely ID theft guys from priests to something else. Don't ask my how or why my mind came up with priests, but it did. But can you imagine your local priest as an internet-savvy thief? I just couldn't see myself writing it despite having dreamt up the whole thing.

Although ... no one would expect that twist. Hmmm, maybe I should reconsider ... nah.

As for actual writing/editing - action has been minimal this week due to life stuff. But I did get through that difficult scene I mentioned last week. The meeting between those two characters is now totally different from what I had been working on. The new version flowed out of the ol' fingertips into the keyboard. I think it was the unrealistic part that was tripping me up. Will go back and reread for flow, fill in the gaps before moving on, but I'm pleased with how it worked out.