Announcing WINDSHIELDS! + NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up

In this final post of the year, I have some news to share. I mentioned about two months ago that I had an announcement to make regarding OSAI. Here it is:

The anthology for the 2015 creative writing class (which includes me) has been released.

Once more, there is a picture of each contributor and three pages worth of work from them. I have one flash fiction piece and two poems included. I'm quite proud of them.

If you would like more information about the anthology or if you perhaps want your own copy, links are on my Publications page.

Hopefully, I'll have news of more publications soon. I submitted three poems to two literary magazines on my campus and am currently waiting to hear back. I submitted a short story to a contest being judged by Ellen Hopkins as well. I don't really expect to win, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to have my work read by one of my favorite authors.

I would also like to tell y'all how my NaNoWriMo went, now that it's nearly the end of December. I finished with a word count of 17,718. Of course, that's no where near goal. However, I am not disappointed. This is kind of what I expected. And 17k is nothing to scoff at. It's a big chunk of a novel, a whole beginning. Something I wouldn't have if I hadn't tried NaNoWriMo this year.

As I said, this will be my last post of 2015, but I think I'll be posting again soon. I'm currently working on my goals for the upcoming year, which involves some serious thinking about priorities and what I want. I may have some decisions to share.

My College Life & NaNoWriMo

Today is November 1, the first day of NaNoWriMo. I am currently at 1,128 words and still only about 85% sure I'm participating this year.

I've been grappling with this decision for two months, going through a series of highs and lows. At times, I was super excited at the thought of writing, of creating a novel. At other times, the mere thought of extra work, extra pressure, made me want to curl up into a ball and sleep for four hours.

Because college is different from high school. Here, it seems like the work never ends. I know every assignment I have to complete by the end of the semester, which means even when I'm caught up, I feel like I have something that needs to be done. This makes fitting in writing seem impossible.

However, for the last few weeks I've been keeping track of how much time I actually spend on homework and studying. It's about twenty-one hours a week, meaning I do school work about three hours a day. One hour on top of that for writing doesn't seem like that much.

So, I've scheduled an hour's worth of writing every day this week except Wednesday, since I have a test on Thursday. We'll see how it works out.

I might not be winning NaNoWriMo this year, I might not even come close, but I think I'm going to try.

(P.S. I should be posting another update soon regarding OSAI.)

Something BIG - The Most Newsie THINKING OF YOU Post Ever

I have made some big decisions. And today I'm going to finally share them with you.

First, I've made a title change. THINKING OF YOU has become THINK OF ME.

I decided to make this change after a burst of inspiration. I've always planned for THINK OF ME to be the first in a series. Originally, that series had a total of seven books. However, I never really wanted to write any of the other six. Then one night a couple of months ago I was lying in bed and everything clicked.

The Controller Chronicles is now a four book series consisting of the tentatively titled THINK OF ME, RAIN ON ME, SPARK WITHIN ME, and DIE FOR ME. Each book still has a different narrator and the series still tells the story of the Controllers coming out to the rest of humanity. Now, though, instead of detailing a drawn out battle, each book focuses on a phase of that coming out. There's the initial rebellion against government oppression, the winning of that fight, the actual coming out, and the aftermath.

The best part is that THINK OF ME's original plot already fits in this plan. This means I don't have to start over and can build on what I already have.

I cannot express to you how excited I am. Thinking about this series makes me want to dance because it fills me with so much happy energy.

Second, it's time for that big announcement I've been hinting at for weeks.

I'm going to be serializing THINK OF ME on Wattpad.

While this isn't like super, super major news, it is a big step for me. I want people to read my writing. I want people to enjoy my writing. I want to hear what people have to say about my writing. And, let's face it, I'm a long way from traditional publishing. Plus, self publishing kind of intimidates me. This is my third option.

I'm also hoping that doing this will finally motivate me to really get on THINK OF ME revisions. I've been hemhawing around for over three years. Serializing my book will keep me accountable and eager.

Of course, my novel isn't quite ready for the public eye. The first thing I have to do is complete a structure or "fill-in-the-blanks" revision. As I've said in a previous post, I have twenty scenes I need to rewrite and eight I need to write. After that, I'm going to be revising chapter-by-chapter as I post them on Wattpad.

My goal is to have my first chapter up on October 31st. This gives me around three months to complete my structure revision and prevents that stress from leaking into NaNoWriMo time. After my initial posting, I aim to post a chapter every two weeks. I feel like this is totally doable and often enough to keep people interested.

THINK OF ME is not the only work I plan to publish on Wattpad either. I want to post my City in the Sky stories there as well. Again, it's a motivation thing. I need to start writing this series already! I don't have an exact date set for the first short story yet, but I'm thinking sometime in January. Hopefully by then I'll have a few readers.

So, that's my big news. I'll probably be posting a revising schedule soon because I feel like I need one to reach my deadline. You can check out my Wattpad profile here if you want, though it's not much to look at at the moment. I can't wait to see what the coming months bring!