So I'm having a lot of NaNo-related uncertainty right now.

The last two years, I 'won' NaNo (i.e. I wrote 50K words in the month of November) with original fiction - girl-centric fantasy - but never actually finished the stories. They're still just sitting there and I have no overwhelming desire to pick them up again.

I have a third original story on my drive that I've been picking at here and there, and I have a ton of notes and timelines and whatnot written up for it, but I've always read how bad it is to use an established idea for NaNo because of the fear of completely screwing it up. Which is totally me.

When I started thinking about NaNo at the start of the month I generated a germ of an idea... something a little more scifi than fantasy, figuring a change of pace might be a good thing. However, it's still really only a germ. I know a few facts about my MC and her world and that's it. And the idea of going into November with an almost completely-blank slate is... well, I know some people do it, but it's kind of freaking me out.

And then there's always fanfic. I've never done fic for NaNo before, even though it's kosher, because I figured the whole idea was for me to stretch myself. But there's this sequel to White Blank Page lurking in the back of my mind that I'm pretty sure I want to write, and I know from prior experience that I could pound out 50K of Clint/Natasha and Team easy, but... I don't know. It kind of feels like cheating. :\

Oh, by the way, I know it's mostly PMS, but I'm getting ticked off by the commercials for this "Alex Cross" movie. STFU, morons, it's Aaron Cross. JEEZ.

1. If you're not into Avengers fandom/Clint&Natasha stuff, you can ignore the last three posts. Except... what's wrong with you?? XD

2. On a related note, I'm having more writing issues. I swear the next thing I write is going to be comprised solely of people sitting around talking and maybe sexytimes.



3. My aunt was over last night for my cousin's birthday party, and this happened, and it gave me a happy.

TV: Bourne Legacy commercial.

Aunt: "He was in The Hurt Locker."

Me: *silent giggles*

Aunt: "What's his name? Jeremy..."

Me: *trying not to look too excited about this conversation* "Renner."

Aunt: "Right. I like him."

Me:

I've been trying all week to get some writing done, and when do I finally start hitting my stride? Why, at bedtime on Sunday night, of course? When else, I ask you?

When else???

Just shy of 10,000 words and taking a little break to recharge the muse. I dug out some of my writing books for just this purpose and have been going through one of Orson Scott Card's, Characters and Viewpoint. I think most of what he writes about are things good writers and readers know instinctively, but when you're in the middle of a NaNo slog it doesn't hurt to have things laid out in black and white.

One of my concerns with this story is that my heroine is, well, unlikable. So far she's been put in a situation where the reader is prone to feeling sympathetic, but I also want to give her some character flaws to overcome (or not) and to keep her from becoming an inadvertant Mary Sue. So this is kind of a quick-link reference for myself... if anyone else wants to put it to use, go ahead. Like I said, this isn't anything earth shattering, mostly just things to keep in mind when crafting characters.

Common factors when writing likable characters:
- Familiarity: At least superficially like the target audience
- Altruistic: choosing to put others' good ahead of her own, rescuing others in need, willing to sacrifice herself if no other options remain
- Proactive: not always reacting to things other people do
- Courageous: willing to take risks
- Fair: plays by the rules
- Attitude: not a whiner
- Dependable: stands by her word, keeps promises
- Clever: Rather that being merely 'intelligent'
- Endearing imperfections: See: Han Solo

Weeee I just had a breakthrough with my NaNo problem!

Okay people, I need your help: reccs for movies and books with good depictions of swordfighting.

So as you might have assumed from my previous post, I've picked up my NaNoWriMo 2010 story for the first time since, well, November 2010. I hit 50,000 words a few days early and came to a screeching halt, and haven't really had the guts to look at it closely since. See, it was my first ever NaNo win, and while writing it I even thought it was fairly decent, and I was afraid to look at it again and find out that it belonged on the scrap heap. I glanced over it a few times, tightened up the prose here and there, cut out section that, now that I wasn't worried about a word count, were obviously stupid, but always stopped short of continuing the story.

Until last night/today. Perhaps confronted with the necessity of cleaning my house this weekend, my brain and muse went into overdrive. While I technically still haven't written the scene where I stalled out at 50,001 words (why do I keep inventing worlds where people use swords? Swordfights are hard to write!) I have a vague idea of where my characters are going, which is great since before I had no idea at all.

The problem is that while I have protagonists, possible ship (of course), a handful of countries with their own geography, religion, and culture, backstory, etc, my villain is pretty meh at this point. Sure she's responsible for a lot of bad stuff in the past, some of which the reader knows, but the POV characters don't which makes her a pretty poor villain. The only other bad guy in the story (actual bad guy as opposed to annoying dude or dudette) was dead prior to Chapter One. I've always been a firm believer that a story needs some kind of peril to be really interesting, and right now my characters are all pretty much in stasis. My protagonists have worries, and a mystery to solve, but due to circumstances they aren't really in a position to play Sherlock Holmes.

I suppose I should trust in the lessons of NaNo: that if I don't think about it too much I can write a lot of words that don't suck. And we'll take it from there.

Why do most of my plot bunnies lead to me trying to create entire religions from scratch??

Argh.

Can anyone think of a piece of published fiction that uses rotating 1st person perspective?

I decided I need to rename my FMC in the story I'm plotting. It just wasn't working with the other names. Anyway, I'm down to a couple of candidates:

- Felicie fe-LEE-tsee-ah
- Gabriele gahp-ree-E-lah
- Odilie o-DEE-lee-ah

I want the name to have a Germanic flavor (I got all three of these from a name database) and I'd also like it to have a nickname or diminutive of some kind, even if I have to make it up ;)

Does anyone have an opinion?