NaNo Day 1

Happy NaNoWrimo my fellow wrimos! It's day one and I'm about to go to bed - don't worry, it isn't the END of day one, but the beginning. I've been awake since the day before. Wanted to get started on my writing at midnight. I'm going to bed feeling good. 1875 words under my belt. Not bad, especially since I'm hoping to still get some more writing done later in the day today.

My story is coming out a bit differently than what I had envisioned. But I'm pleased with it so far. The two characters I've written have begun to take shape in my mind, so I'm hoping things will continue smoothly. Although, when I pick up where I left off I'll be introducing a new character whose personality, attitude, and voice I'm going to have to find. Wish me luck!

Happy NaNoWeen!

It's Halloween, peeps! My most favorite time of the year. Unfortunately, the day is eclipsed by the start of NaNoWrimo - which I will begin promptly at midnight. So today, instead of going all Halloweeny, I'm staying in; listening to a Halloween mix I made on Spotify and just getting some last minutes NaNo things ironed out for tonight. I also may or may not have eating $8 worth of candy...

I'm anxious to start writing. I have no idea how this story is going to go, but I want to hurry up and start writing it and see if I can figure it all out. I also have been tasked with the duty of making sure my pal Crystal-Rain Love writes her lil tushy off.

I'm ready! (I hope) Are you?

If you're doing NaNo, come find/friend me - SaturnMoonie is my moniker. :)

To NaNo Or Not To NaNo...

November is fast approaching. That means NaNoWriMo is almost here. I wasn't thinking that hard about it, because I was thinking about skipping it this year. I wanted to try to get my Cotton Candy Girls 1 done. I did finish it, about a month or two ago actually. I wanted to read through it to make sure things made sense. I'm maybe halfway through with it. This is something that should have only taken me a day or two, but I hate reading my own stuff and it's even harder when I'm going through one of my self doubt moments. Basically I think my story is a piece of shit and that's why I haven't finished reading it. So I wasn't really thinking about starting something else. Plus I do have my YA that I want to continue working on...

But then I was talking to Virginia and she was asking me about NaNo and what I was going to do. After our conversation, I decided I would do it! But  I won't be working on my YA - I need to do research as I write it and that'll slow my writing. Because my work schedule varies, I won't know if I'll be able to hit the library, so I'm going to continue to wait on that particular project. But as I was thinking what to write, I remembered an idea I had last week that I had jotted down - and it is another paranormal YA. So tonight, I'm gonna pull some books I have on hand that will help as far as research and I'll take a stab at NaNo this year again. :)

NaNo Failure

So it's been a month since I last blogged. Everyone probably thought I was busy getting my word count in for NaNo. Sadly, that is not the case. I didn't even make it to 5k. :(

They say that the ability to write is like a muscle and I've never been as aware of that as I was last month. I remember when I used to blog every day, when I would work on my erotic series, and participate in all sorts of writerly things. About two years ago, I decided to put everything on hold to pursue my theater dreams...now I am not going to get into the depressing details, but obviously things didn't work out. Anyway, it was foolish of me to think that after 2 years of not writing, that I would just pick up where I left off.

So the following are my excuses for not succeeding in NaNo this year:

1. I'm rusty. I couldn't make the words come out, and this wasn't me trying to edit as I wrote...I just couldn't form the story.

2. My story idea, though excited as I was to write, did not speak to me. Or I should say, my characters did not speak to me. I need my characters to talk to me, otherwise things become really difficult. They did not speak, not once. I think I wrote what I did just because I brainstormed and was genuinely excited with the idea.

3. The Sims 3 Seasons expansion pack came out in November. Now we all know my obsession with The Sims. I tried really hard to keep it at bay, and I think I did rather well. But at the end of the day, that was 1 hour a day that I could have been writing.

4. I got sick. I felt shitty! I slept the majority of my time.

5. I was (re)training for an account at work. When I got home from work, feeling under the weather as I was, I just didn't feel like doing anything.

6. I had to transition between my 8 a.m - 6:30 p.m shift to my new 7:15 p.m - 9:15 a.m. schedule. It took a minute to re-adjust myself.

and those are my excuses. But I can't dwell, or at least I refuse to dwell. I know what I have to do - get back to writing. Slowly, I'll be where I used to be, and then I'll surpass that as well. So my goal for the rest of the year and the new year, is to write more. More often and more words. Blogs, replies, chats, stories, etc. I gotta work my writing muscle any way I can. :)

End of Day 1 recap

It is officially the end of day 1 of NaNoWriMo for me. I didn't get as many words in as I had planned, but I'm still ahead for the day so I'll take it.

I thought I would share the song lyrics I came up with a few hours ago; as I mentioned in the previous post, I made the decision to have song lyrics throughout the novel because the main character is a singer/songwriter. I have never really written song lyrics before, so that was tough, plus the fact that I was coming up with them on the spot was pretty hard too! All in all, I'm happy with what I came up with. Something is something, right?

Please Don't Go

Apologizing was not enough

To repair the damage that I caused

Now I stand alone, watching you leave so slow

The pain of losing you so intense I can barely stand

Please don’t go I silently beg

Please, I beg and beg

Don’t go…don’t go

Seconds turn into minutes

Minutes turn into hours

The pain refusing to subside

The hope of your return refusing to die

I lay awake thinking of the things I should have said

Please don’t go I silently beg

Please, I beg and beg

Don’t go…don’t go

Losing my thoughts in a world of grey

Those are the words I meant to say

To keep you from walking out

To keep you from giving up

Please don’t go I silently beg

Please, I beg and beg

Don’t go…don’t go

Please don’t go

                                              

NaNo Day 1...The Beginning

Hello, just a quick update before I head to bed for a few hours.

For those who forgot what today is, and who didn't read the title of this post...it is November 1st, also known as day 1 of NaNoWriMo. I started writing at midnight because I wanted to get started as soon as possible. Because I work 10 hour shifts and I catch the bus, I'm not really going to be able to write every day, so the days I do write, I wanna make sure I get a good word count in. So as of 5 am I am at 2256 which I'm very happy with. I'm past the target average words per day and I still have the afternoon and evening of day 1 to get more words in. I would have had more words written but a few things happened.

1. My main character is a singer/songwriter and I made the creative decision to have song lyrics in my novel. Do you know how hard it is to come up with song lyrics at the drop of a hat? Hella difficult.

2. I got hungry around 12:30 a.m. (lol) so I made myself a sandwich...and watched Big Bang Theory while I ate it.

3. I woke my mom up for work and made her breakfast. 

All time consuming tasks. Alas, my brain is tired and I cannot write any longer. So I will sleep, probably till 2 pm. Cook for the house, and then settle in to write the rest of the afternoon and evening. Then it's back to my work schedule.

So until then, I leave you with my widget - how I've missed using these. :)



                                    

The Beginning of My NaNo Soundtrack

Since NaNo is taking an eeeternity to get here (can you tell I'm anxious?) I decided to take the last few hours of my day off to work on a playlist for my story. I knew it wasn't going to be easy since I'm not sure what the tone of my story is going to be; meaning I don't know how dark it will get. But I figured I'd give it a try...

I spent about 4 hours on it and ended up with 1 hour worth of music. LOL. Oy...

But something is something, right? So here is my soundtrack (so far) for my novel Broken Song:



 Night Of The Hunter - 30 Seconds To Mars

A Modern Myth - 30 Seconds To Mars

Playmate To Jesus - Aqua

Come N' Get It - Aqua

Wind - Akeboshi

Orpheus - Mamoru Miyano

Vuela Mas Alto - OV7

Passacaglia - Secret Garden

Voy Malacostumbrado - Aventura

Conciencia - Aventura

She Will Be Loved (Acoustic) - Maroon 5

Smooth Criminal - David Garret

Electric Shock - f(x)

Jet - f(x)

And that's what I have so far.

On a totally unrelated note, I saw this online and I just had to share it with you guys.

Isn't it just freaking adorable!? I want it soooo bad!!! Hehe.

On another unrelated note - well unrelated to Sailor Moon, but related to NaNoWriMo (I'm jumping all over the place), I made another one of my characters into a sim. :D

This is Charisma Johnston

That's it for tonight. I hope you enjoy the songs, maybe some of them are new to you. TTFN!

Sims3 - Not just for playing

I usually have a bunch of characters in my head, waiting for me to tell their story. Because it has been over 2 years since I've written, I guess you could say my characters are dormant.

As you know from my previous post(s), I have decided to participate in this years NaNoWriMo and I needed to come up with a new story. Since all my characters are MIA I needed to come up with new ones. I first came up with the story idea, and then the names of my characters. By this point I have a vague idea of what they look like, but I need a stronger mental image. I decided to go into CAS (Create A Sim) and play around to see if I could come up with my characters. Conclusion: Sims 3 is an awesome way to get a clearer idea of what characters look like.

Meet Johanna Langley:

Superstar Anna:

Aiden Feare:

Beau Fiore:

My NaNo Story

I figured out what I'm writing for NaNoWriMo, and it took me less than a day to figure it out! Here is my synopsis:

Johanna Langley had one dream: to be a successful singer with thousands of fans. At 26, she was beginning to get desperate. Then one night she meets Beau Fiore who offers her dream in a silver platter...for a price. Johanna accepts and becomes the overnight sensation Anna; but the price she paid has hidden consequences. Now it's up to her number one fan and childhood friend, Aiden Feare to figure out what price Johanna paid for her fame and save her from her dream.

I'm super excited to get started.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that

Where does the time go? Had not realized it's been this long since I blogged. Work has got me a little busy. I'm not sure if I mentioned this or not...I got a job. :) Well, I should probably back up a bit...the awful warehouse job I got...I quit...3 hours after my second day. It was horrible, I couldn't do it. I am not cut out for it.

Desperate, I turned to Craigslist for job postings and there I found a CSR position. I emailed them my resume and they called me the next day. Turns out it was for the call center where I used to work at. My old supervisor saw my resume go through and had the HR person contact me immediately. He set up an interview for me to go see my old supervisor and when I went in for my "interview" she caught me up on the things that had changed and handed me a list of the available shifts and told me to pick the one I wanted. She even adjusted it slightly for me. She then said that I didn't really need to submit a resume or interview...and that was that. So I spent half of last week and half of the week before re-training on Healthy Directions, and by the beginning of last week I was ready to go out on my own. Unfortunately my desk wasn't ready so I had to wait until Wed, but I got my desk and I'm all set. This week is my first full week on my schedule - 10 hour shifts, which sucks, especially since they start at 8 a.m and I am NOT a morning person. But, I only work 4 days a week and I have Tuesday-Thursday off, and I really like that.

Ok, enough about work, blah blah blah, I'm boring myself. On to more exciting stuff. I decided to dust off my old NaNoWriMo profile and participate this year. I was MIA the last two years, but this year, I'm all for it. Now I have to come up with a story idea in 9 days...let's see what happens! I'm excited, I've missed it. This is my link in case you want to follow along or add me; http://nanowrimo.org/en/participants/saturnmoonie.

Well that's it for tonight. Let's see where things go from here. Until next time...

Operation Tap Out That Mutha

NaNoWrimo is officially over, and I didn't make the 50,000, I only made it up to 24,700 or something like that. Now a big part of me is disappointed because I really wanted to cross the finish line. But another part of me is just proud that I wrote and I stuck with it and that I wrote that many words! I've never written anything this long before...and I'm not finished. Just because I didn't win NaNo doesn't mean I'm quitting, I still have a novel to finish writing, thus Operation Tap Out That Mutha is oooon.

Crystal-Rain Love came up with this concept (along with the hilariously awesome name)because she's trying to finish her current novel, and she asked that we make sure she stays on top of things. Well since I have no life of my own, and I've grown very fond of Rain (she's such a great gal)I've decided to be all up on her Black Cherry Kool-Aid, and join her and trying to accomplish our own set goals. Mine being to finish my novel and read more books so I can review them on my Book Universe Blog.

On a quick upadate...I bought a new laptop yesterday, it should arrive around the 5th. I had so much drama with it because I first found the perfect laptop, a Sony Viao in pink (my fav. color) and it was on sale if I bought it online. It was only going to cost around $1,069. Then it went on Black Friday Sale until Monday, so then it was only going to cost $900.99. So here I am running about trying to get the rest of my money together by Monday to buy the darn thing, and THEN....Someone points out anothe website that's having an online Monday sale and they're selling a $2,000 Sony Viao for only $700.00!!! Now this is where all the crazyness began because the cheaper laptop was a different model than the one I was going to get. It was also black...I REALLY had my heart set on the pink one. Well even though the black one wasn't PINK and the keyboard and outer shell weren't as cute/pretty as the pink one, I bought the black one.

Why? Because it was CHEAPER, and because it had a bigger screen (17 inches vs 14 inches on my pink baby). The lappy I have now is 17 inch and I love the size of the screen. If I'm going to play Sims 2 AND 3 I need a BIG screen. :D So I rushed to do what I needed to do and bought the laptop and a flashdrive too, hehe. I'm still going to use my old laptop, and I'll probably take it to work w/ me so the flashdrive will come in handy when I want to work on a novel or read an e-book and it's only in one laptop. But hey at least I have more money for Christmas shopping!

My NaNo WIP

Just thought I'd do a little procrastination before writing this morning, so I decided to tell you a little about my WIP.

I'm a little surprised at the way it's coming out. It has more sex than I anticipated, and it's kinda sexual in general...not really what I had in mind, but that's what happened. It's also a lot darker than I meant it to be...my heroine--after being possesed by the forces of evil--just ate some hobo's heart.

Yeah I know...EEEEK, but that's what she wanted to do, so I let her. Who knows what's going to happen, I have no clue.


On another note, I'd like to take the time to bitch a lil bit...I'm sick of a certain ex-boyfriend of mine belittling my word count. No matter how much I write, he isn't satisfied. He asked me how much I had written this past weekend, and I told him, close to 5,000. And he says to me, is that all? Are you serious, really? What the hell does he want me to do, write the freaking thing in one day? Then he has the nerve to ask me, well how many weekends have you been writing this? What the hell!? I had to hang up on him because I was going to rip him a new one...who the f**k is HE? He's been doing this since NaNo started and I already freaking told him, if he thinks he could do a better job and write more words than me, and make a cohesive story with a plot, a conflict and a resolution, to go right ahead. And he says, it's not what HE wants to do...what the hell does it matter? Just because I love to write and I want to do it doesn't mean it's any easier for me. At least I'm trying to make my dreams a reality...what the hell is he doing with his life, besides clean bathrooms that is.

Yup I went there, totally bitchy of me, and I sorta apologize, but if he's gonna be mean to me and belittle my efforts, then right back at ya. I'm sick of it being ok for him to be mean, but when I give him a taste of his own medicine then I'm a bitch and it's different because I'm intentionally mean...WHATEVER...I'm sick of it. *sighs* Ok I'm done ranting...

NaNo weekend...TRL

This weekend was hella wordy! I spent the weekend writing and participating in word wars, I'm super tired, super drained. Friday night I had around 13,000 words, tonight I'm almost to 18,000 words. I'm exhausted, but I'm glad I wrote my lil brain off. I wrote a lot of good lines today, it was hard to submit my best line over at Rain's site...so I submitted a paragraph even though she said not to...oops sowwy

Tonight was the finale of TRL (Total Request Live) I haven't seen the show in a few years because it wasn't the same, it was kinda suckish. But I decided to watch it tonight because it was the finale and they were going to reminisce on all the stuff that happened on the show these past 10 years. Lemme tell you, I was watching The Backstreet Boys sing "I Want It That Way" and I got a little teary eyed. It wasn't because it was The Backstreet Boys, I've never really been a "fan" I was an *NSYNC girl all the way. But I remembered when TRL first came one, before it was abbreviated. I remember when Britney first came on and when Christina first came on. I remember the countless NSYNC/Backstreet Boys battles and how they always had the first two spots and one day NSYNC would be number 1 and then Backstreet Boys would take it. I remember calling and voting, I remember when they premiered "Sonny Came Home", when Justin performed as a solo artist...so many things, so many videos. I REMEMBER WHEN THEY ACTUALLY PLAYED THE VIDEOS.

It made me feel old, 10 years had passed, and it made me feel like I was one step closer to adulthood, like one of the last part of my youth just ended. I will never get it back, that's why I got teary eyed. It was a little sad, but I'm glad I watched it, a lot of fond memories were attached to that show.

Day 12 of NaNo...

I'm feeling it today, first day of feeling like quitting. I just haven't felt like writing, and I think I've written 100 words today. I'm getting discouraged, I don't even know where I'm going with the novel anymore *sighs* it's probably because I got my period and my tummy is killing me. I didn't even go to work today because my cramps were so painful this morning.

Maybe things will be better tomorrow...

Getting ready...

For a few things...lets see...


Halloween is tomorrow and I still haven't gotten my fangs or fake blood, or the black face crayon so I can draw my whiskers for my day costume. I have about an hour and forty-five minutes worth of music on my NaNo playlist, but I'm thinking I may need to add more songs...I don't know, it's a whole month of listening to the same songs, I may get tired of them, and they may get desensitized. We'll see...I finished a book last night (Death Perception by Victoria Laurie) you can read my review here if you like.


I think that's about it, I also want to make a quick comment about my glasses. I've had them for about 3 years now and I've worn them hundreds of times. But for some reason everyone has decided to compliment me on them these last couple of weeks. What's up with that? Did you just notice them, because that's just crazy, what were you looking at when you people talked to me?