First Update!

It’s been rather a lot more days than I’d planned before updating, but I’ve been a bit busy with work and family and turning 22 so this is the first chance I’ve had to update.

So far, my Nano plans are all on schedule and I have an almost completed synopsis for the first book of the planned “Seas” trilogy. This has made it so much easier to start to work together the snippets I’ve written so far. I now not only know where my characters need to start and end, but how they’re going to get from A to B as well. It’ll be interesting to see how much things change once I start writing. Usually at that point the plan goes out of the window and my plot bunnies start to run away with things again. One day, I will learn to control those bunnies!

My next job is to create some pretty in-depth character bios before I start writing again. I’d like to think I know my characters pretty well by now, but I do like the idea of having a proper biography of each of them before I get going this year. I think it can be easy to forget how your characters think and what makes them do what they do when you’re working with so many of them, so bios are a really good way to make sure they all stay in character and serve their purpose.

I’m quite a visual person when it comes to creative thinking so I also like to collect a few photos and sketches of people and places to help me really see what I’m writing about. My scrapbook is getting increasingly full of little bits of paper so I’m hopefully going to be organising them into something a little more accessible in time to start scribbling again! I've been investigating some cheap cork noticeboards that I might invest in so I can pin up a few of my favourites. 

I’m not sure how much writing time I’ll be getting in the next couple of weeks, as the imminent arrival of my copy of Guildwars 2 could be taking up a fair bit of my time while I unleash my inner gamer once again. I always find that playing fantasy games like this really kickstarts my imagination though, so we’ll see what comes of it once I get going.

Hope everyone else’s Nano plans are coming together too. Only two months to go now!

Emily x 

The Road to NaNo 2012

Hello :)

I've decided to use my little blog to track my progress in the run up to and throughout 2012's NaNoWriMo. This will be my second time participating and, after just about breaking the 20,000 word mark last year, I'm determined to see it through the time.

I'll be continuing with the same project, but all 50,000 words of my total will be written in November 2012 - this is just over 1,600 words a day for a full month and should take me close to completing the first instalment of the trilogy I have planned.

I don't want to say too much about the plot until I've managed to finalise my outline, but the title of this blog is a little tie-in to the titles I have planned for all three books. My working titles have been Seas of Smoke, Seas of Scarlet and Seas of Silence, but obviously this could all change very quickly if I decide to take a different route!

I'm hoping that announcing my plans to the world, or whoever reads this, might prompt me to stick with this and reach my target word count by the end of November. I'm going to try to update whenever I make a little bit of progress so hopefully that should be fairly frequently. I may also throw in some little updates about life outside of writing. I tend to find cooking very therapeutic when I'm working on a big project so chances are there'll be a few recipes and cakes involved here and there!

Thanks for reading, I'll hopefully be posting again very soon!

Emily x