Plot Bunnies! Plot Bunnies Everywhere!

Every author out there knows showers and baths can be our greatest source of inspiration for new ideas or plot fixes. However, they don’t always comply with the stories we want the idea or fix for. Why you ask? Simple. Because that would be too easy.

The other day as I was trying to figure out why I was staring through a keyhole at the White Rabbit for my Shard I was completely out of inspiration other than associating it with Alice in Wonderland. Naturally – while I was trying to determine the opposite of wonder – I told my friends I was going to go chase the rabbit down the drainpipe and see where it lead me.

A half hour later of shower pondering and EUREKA!

I had inspiration!

For the Wrong. Damn. Story.

I eventually figured out where the rabbit was leading me by the end of the shower, but the White Rabbit was not the plotline my brain original solved. No. Not even close. Instead, my mind decided to wander down a different path and throw me a possible solution to my epilogue issue for Fated to Darkness. I mean, I’m not totally sold that it will work yet, and it definitely needs some playing around with to make it work, but…it might work, and still allow me to use the epilogue how I wished to without hinting a major spoiler. Either way, I’m going to be playing carefully with words and description when I write this epilogue.

More than likely it’s still going to give me a headache no matter what.

But this eureka moment is a good start!

You know what else every author out there knows? That you can never have too many plot bunnies. Never ever. And that we need to invent immortality to write them all, but even then we’d never write them all because they would. Just. Keep. Coming.

Unfortunately, a cure to mortality has not yet been found.

But when I say they just keep coming, I mean that they literally never stop. In the midst of chasing the White Rabbit down my drainpipe and then writing the Shard, the whole thing suddenly took off with a full storyline and complete conflict and even a half spurted scene in my head and then, and then…!

Then guess who had another full on novel idea?

Yep. Me.

Just another novel screaming for attention now. A darkened, twisted, slightly altered version of Alice in Wonderland. All from a single picture. All from a Wednesday Word prompt. All from a simple, seemingly harmless Shard.

It’s not harmless anymore.

Alice in Wonderland has now become Alice in Court, and Alice is demanding her twisted version of the story be written before she decides to checkmate me instead of the Black Queen. (It makes sense in my head, I swear.) What makes this storyline even better is that a friend told me the copyrights to Disney for that story and characters are long past, which means I could still use the same names and all. Granted, I might change the name of Wonderland for the realm. I’m thinking something like Dreadland, but I need to play with it because the whole storyline evolves around a game of human chess, in a twisted way.

It’s amazing in my head right now. I was grinning from ear to ear for a good long while after writing the Shard.

If I’m keeping score too, this is probably about the sixth or seventh Shard screaming at me to become way more than flash fiction piece. (I’m blaming you, P.T.) Let’s count them all, shall we?

Starting from the beginning of my Shards, first there was Accident Twin that’s been vying for a plotline for awhile now. Originally it was sparked from a conversation with a friend. Then there’s One Little Secret that was originally sparked years ago by a simple phrase. After that came Embermyst, which most of my followers should know I did finish as a short story and got it published with Victory Tales Press last October. Mercy Me started to really nag at me too for it’s own storyline in at least a short story of some sort, so did Dead Souls Walking. After that Clockwork Heart reared its head, and that one is becoming either a short story or a novella, probably a novella. It’s also partly what I’ll be working on next month for Camp. Traitor is trying for its own novel, and one day probably will be its own because it involves a huge secondary – partly another main – character of Fated to Darkness. It would be a prequel kind of novel. Then there’s Betrayal in Duty, which is still trying rather hard to spark something more then the general idea I have already, but hasn’t gotten any further than the Shard yet. Dragonstone was rearing its head pretty damn hard, and really making me want to write a dragon/elf/leprechaun cross fantasy story. Last of all is Alice in Court now with a full on novel idea.

Ten. That’s ten Shards trying very hard to become something more than a Shard.

I’m going to need a lot more NaNo’s to write all of these, along with all the other novel ideas and half finished or partly started novels I already have, plus all the other ones planned in my head involving series or standalones or… UGH. I need to become immortal.

When is too many plot bunnies too many again?

Oh, right, never they say.

Well, at least two of them will be worked on in April. One of which will finally be finished!

Maybe I need to stop writing flash fiction so I stop sparking so many ideas.

……

Nah! Why would I do that when they’re fun and a good exercise for writing? Besides, I’m on my fourth week in a row with a place in the #ThursThreads challenge hosted by a fellow Snippeteer author! I got an honorable mention again this week! The best part about this week’s mention is it’s the 5th anniversary of the challenge which means there were prizes! Woooohooooo!

(I will share my honorable mention tale at the end of this post.)

Now, moving on a bit since it IS the eve of first Camp NaNoWriMo of 2017…

There’s a half hour left until the plunge into madness of Camp NaNo begins for me and my normal excitement for the challenge is revving its engine full strength! (I mean, that could also be attributed to the fact I’ve had a Monster coffee, but…) I can’t wait for it to start, because my first order of business is finishing Fated to Darkness! And I’ve got the first four days of April off to write like crazy! (Thank the Gods too because everything has gone to hell the past two days. I need a vacation, badly. I need a campfire and alcohol is more like it.)

Who else is participating in Camp this month? What do you plan to work on? What’s your crazy goal?

I’ll be starting my writing at midnight, per normal tradition for me now. Expect all the stories of Camp NaNo for next month of blog posts, it’s sure to be a fun ride!

And now I’ll leave you with my honorable mention tale to sign off for the week again:

The blast knocked me off my feet. Debris pelted me with an alarming force, tearing at my skin and clothes. Plumes of smoke and dust swallowed my vision and sucked away the air from the world around me.

My ears were ringing loudly, normal sound was muffled and far off. Cries. Screaming. Weeping. Shouting. Car alarms blaring in the background.

Anguish. I could hear anguish, and pain. Panic.

“Ma’am?”

I coughed and shakily pushed myself up to sit. My gaze traveled upwards. Smoke and flames licked the sky from the center of the 911 call center I had been walking past. Ash and dirt rained from the explosions like a spring shower. My eyes drifted around the block, ears still buzzing with a thousand bees.

Someone was scream-crying to my right, mere feet away, yelling someone’s name. A little boy was sprawled unnaturally at the woman’s side. Crushed under a too large chunk of cement blocks. Blood was pooling rapidly around his head.

Dead. He was already dead.

People were running frantically, passing by in a blur. A man tripped over my legs, then kept limping along. I pushed up more.

“Ma’am? Are you alright, ma’am? Can you hear me? Don’t move now.”

The bees in my ears quieted slightly and I registered the pedestrian kneeling at my side, checking me over. First responder training? Maybe. Another explosion rumbled the ground and I looked to the burning building. Someone else screamed shrilly.

Terror.

I heard someone yell terror attack.

And here is what thy judge said about my tale: No, the narrator is not alright. Are any of us, knowing that scenes like that take place all over the world day after day? Sometimes we need to crawl into the darkness to understand the problem.

Distractions

They get in the way. They always get in the way.

My last couple days have been nothing but distractions, half of them the pleasant kind and the other half the by-the-Gods-I’m-going-to-flip-the-hell-out kind.

Have you ever realized that when you tell yourself you’re going to sit down and write, and then you do sit down, you end up finding a million other things you could be doing? Then they nag and nag until you end up wandering off to one of them and totally forget about writing?

That was me pretty much all day yesterday. I knew I had to get through blog hops and try to set up PayPal again, then I’d be free to write I thought. Right? Wrong.

I got through the blog hops, and I tried PayPal for the third or fourth time in the past two weeks, and then I find out it still won’t flipping work. Eventually I got to the point in which I said “screw it” and once more emailed customer support of PayPal none too nicely. The reply message back I got today hasn’t made me any happier. I’m an introvert, I do not like talking on the phone, I do not want to have to call to sort this mess out, but I’m being told it’s the only way.

So, that soured my mood to begin with.

By that point I knew I should have started writing but instead I had the urge to work on revamping this blog, doing some more of the drafts for pages. Then I had the urge to ask my anthology coordinator from VTP if I could publish part of Embermyst to Wattpad since I hadn’t last year with everything going on at the time.

Needless to say I ended up asking that question and then went off searching the Wattpad threads for a cover artist for Embermyst. I filled out a form to someone to start the ball rolling and thought, “Great! Now I can go write!”

Did that happen?

Of flipping course not.

Instead, I found myself setting up part of the story so I can post it to Wattpad as soon as I got a cover. (And now that I’m talking about it, I find myself drawn back to finding other cover artists. *Sigh*)

After that I began thinking about revamping some of my blog again, then I thought about revamping my Wattpad profile, and then some of my Wattpad stories, and then and then… Then it hit me and suddenly I’m just like, “Wait… Am I only doing this to put off writing?”

Honestly, that seems to be part of the reason why I’m getting so off track. Wanna know how I know that? Because I no longer have a deadline on Clockwork Heart to be pushing myself to write, because I want to start working on Fated to Darkness again, but also because working on Fated to Darkness requires some reading to get back into it and remember where I’m at. Soooo….

Yeah, I seem to be putting off the reading, and I also seem to be sidling away from Clockwork Heart work. Which is dumb. It’s all dumb. I should be writing regardless.

Somehow I need to kick my ass into gear and start writing. I’ve got three days off coming up after tomorrow — thank the Gods because today has been absolute hell and tomorrow isn’t going to be any better. (Damn you mother nature for shaking the snow globe, and damn you technology at work. *Shakes fist at the world*) If I don’t get any writing done in those three days someone better dangle my ass over the pits of Hell until I start writing feverishly again. I need words on a page, and the blog page doesn’t count for this.

Indecisiveness

What do you do when you have a topic(s) to talk about but you have no idea how to start? Do you just start rambling and hope it brings you along to tie everything together? Or do you hit the ground running and see how much it may or may not suck, and/or work out?

That’s my dilemma.

Both for this blog — as I have a topic, or two, to talk of — and for some other news I received a week ago but only pieced together a couple days ago.

Remember me talking about the new short story I was working on, Clockwork Heart? And remember me saying it was going to turn into another submission for VTP’s spring anthology?

Yeah… About that…

There’s no more spring anthology to submit it to.

Turns out, VTP is switching up their submission and anthology releases this year. Instead of doing four separate themed anthologies, they’re trying their hand at a boxed set of stories centralized around a specific setting. In other words, you write a short story in that specific setting regarding this specific place, and your story may tie into another author’s story a little bit. It’s like trying to intertwine the characters and plot lines of four, or more, different books and to me that sounds like a headache and a half to try to get right.

Not at all something I’m interested in. I like being able to control and create my worlds and settings considering I love fantasy and paranormal, and with it being a specific place I have to include, it limits what kind of characters I can create as well.

So, Morgana is out of an anthology she was going to submit to. Which both irks and disappoints me. I was looking forward to completing the story and sending it in for another chance.

Of course, this doesn’t mean I can’t complete the story. I’m still going to write it and there is an option for me to submit it to PbRJV or someone else as a stand alone story, but now I don’t have the same motivation to work on it. Now there’s no deadline looming over me pushing me to work.

Granted, that’s both a blessing and a curse.

In some ways it’s a blessing. I don’t have to worry about my word count anymore which means I could even expand on the story a bit more than I anticipated — which means I also need to do more playing around with it. Since I’m not worrying about a deadline I don’t have to rush or stress over completing it in time. That also means I can pick up on working on Fated to Darkness as well and sort of hop between stories instead of focusing solely on Clockwork Heart.

However, it also sucks because without that deadline, as I said, I’m less motivated. I do still want to finish the story, and while this messes with planning my goals for the year, I think I want to finish it and submit it to something before a certain time. I’m just not sure if that something is going to be PbRJV or a different company. I’m also not sure of that time frame now. I guess I’m going to be doing some researching, though right now I’m not sure of much regarding the story and how I’m going to change course now.

As long as I keep myself writing somehow…

Speaking of which, a new idea for a plot bunny popped into my head today thanks for a coworker. Well, it’s not a fully developed bunny in any way, more of just a really cool idea I could use in some mystery or secret adventure/action kind of scene.

Did you know that if you draw on yourself with a fluorescent highlighter and wash it off, you can still see the residue of it under a black light because it will glow, even if it’s no longer visible?

I did not know this and I’m suddenly fascinated by it! Imagine writing a message on a wall in highlighter, and then washing it off because it must remain secret. However, your partner could come and hold a UV black light over it and read what you wrote yet. Or you could write something on your hand, like a ticket into a secret night club that no one could see. Or a tattoo for the same purpose or for a secret organization or gang that you can only see with that kind of light.

It has so many possibilities! My brain is running wild with ideas!

I’m rather sure my face lit up like a Christmas tree in excitement when my coworker showed and told me about the trick.

So, yeah, now my brain is running wild with ideas for this awesome little fact. I also now want to write a story in which I can use this. In fact, I might have one I can use it in already from a dream I had awhile ago. Or maybe even that new Halloween plot bunny that’s kicking around my head…

Hmmm… So many decisions to make for so many things.

And certainly not enough made-up-my-mind answers to them yet.

Patterns, Sanity, and an Author’s Mind

So, guess who forgot that they needed a blog post until an hour before midnight again?

*Raises hand*

Yep, me. I’m such a ditz when it comes to remembering these things anymore. Or, rather, I remember I need a post for all of five minutes and then POOF! Suddenly the thought is gone and the next thing I know I’ve either missed it or I’m scrambling to get one in on time.

Didn’t I say “later” was a word I wanted to stop using, too?

Part of my problem is work, of course. The other part of the forgetfulness is the fact I hardly ever know what the hell I’m writing about until it becomes another rambling post, such as this one is turning out to be, because I’m running out of time to think of something concrete to talk about.

Are you seeing a pattern in this? Because I am.

Hmm… Patterns…

Maybe that’s my issue, and also my solution.

Perhaps my problem of never knowing what to write about stems from the fact I have no patterns to work off of. And by patterns I mean the struggle of getting myself moving on the things I want to do so I can create a habit or pattern. If I was more consistent in my work and writing and all that good stuff, I bet I would be stumbling across all sorts of topics I could talk about and I wouldn’t have this issue.

So perhaps my problem — a lack of patterns — is also my solution:

Finding a pattern that works for me and sticking to it.

Easier said than done, I know, but hey, it’s a start at least.

In other news, I did get my butt moving some more the past two days and managed to write. I think I’ve added about 1.8k to Clockwork Heart over the last two days. I was hoping for a LOT more — considering I was off yesterday — but I just kept getting really distracted in completely odd ways.

(I’m quite sure on a scale of 1 to 10 in hyperness — 1 being completely meh and 10 being a puppy on speed — I was probably a 20. I’m also quite sure my friends thought I was a lunatic yesterday for the fact I was laughing hysterically over saying one simple word, or one simple thought, or even just one simple look, or even over nothing. Hell, I was seriously questioning my own sanity for a good couple hours, and I’m an author! I know I have very little sanity to begin with!)

So I didn’t manage to get to the end of Chapter 2 on the story like I had hoped for, and I’m not even done with Chapter 1 — though I’m close. On the bright side, I had two little bits of scenes yesterday that had me laughing my ass off for a good five minutes each. (I hope they weren’t just funny because I was cuckoo crazy off life at the time.)

Picture this: a character who can’t feel or understand any kind of emotion and who is pretty much just robotic in the terms of living because they aren’t human trying to explain the “death” of their kind like it is simply taking a walk in the park.

It came out both eerily disturbing and completely hilarious in my opinion. I’m not going to spoil how though, and I’m not going to spoil the other bit that had me laughing. Wait, the other two bits that had me laughing. I forgot about one.

I’m thinking this story is going to shape up quite interestingly, and it’s turning into a lot of fun, which makes me want to write more. And more. Then work gets in the way, and GAH!

I’ll figure it out, as long as I can fend off the new idea jumping around my head from a description a Sleepy Hollow character gave me tonight.

Seriously, is there ever an off switch for the writer’s mind?

Finding My Way

I am really sucking at writing on the days I work this month. I think there’s been a total of maybe four days I worked that I also managed to write. You know the sad part to that? They were during the first week of NaNo when I was so exhausted off my ass that I could hardly think straight.

What is wrong with that picture?

Oh well. I’m still making it work. I’m finding my own way through the craziness that is retail during the holidays and NaNo.

I don’t want to say I’ve had a breakthrough for the second half of the month, but, well, I kind of have.

I’ve been struggling all month a little to write, and not just find the will or time to write. I was okay at the beginning because I knew what the next couple chapters were coming up, and then I sort of got to a part that I knew what had to happen, I knew little ideas, but I didn’t really know how to make those ideas happen just yet. Nothing was forming in my head.

For instance, normally I can picture little snippets of scenes and then hand the reins to my characters and let them tell me how it plays out with those scenes. Sometimes the scenes would change a little, but I still got to point B.

This time I wasn’t getting much though, and I’m wondering if it’s because I’m at the end of the book. There are less than 10 chapters left to write. (Not counting the epilogue if I write it, I’m tossing the idea of it around yet. I originally wanted it but I’m wondering if it might be too spoilerish now. We’ll see.)

But seriously, less than TEN chapters left to write.

To most of you that probably seems like a lot. To me, after working on this book for two and a half years now, that’s freaking short and so, so close to the end. I’m getting excited just thinking about it.

Wait, I jumped ahead of myself here. *Rewinds tape*

Okay, so I said I was struggling this month because I couldn’t figure out where I was headed exactly. I had the ideas but then again didn’t. I was off today and I knew I had to get writing because I fell below par, again, but I was also stuck because I didn’t exactly know where I was going after I finished the chapter I was on.

Now normally I plan out a few chapters in advance so I know what direction I’m going, but I haven’t been doing that for, oh geez, a lot of chapters now. I stopped doing that at Chapter 20 because I was more focused on making Camp NaNo goal and now this goal. I’m now on Chapter 33.

Since I made up my mind to do NaNo at the last possible second this year, I definitely did not have any chapters planned out when I started this month. I’ve been totally pantsing it and seeing where the characters take me. (I do have a rough timeline guide of how things work, so I haven’t been totally blind. Thankfully.)

For the most part I have no issues with pantsing it, the ideas and direction just come along as I write. This time, however, it was beginning to deter me, and that realization finally slapped me in the face today and screamed, “Hey! This is your problem this month! FIX IT!”

Well, I listened and fixed it.

Before I started writing today I spent a good half hour or so talking to myself and pulling my hair out as I jotted down ideas and questions coming to mind and how I could possibly make it all flow together on a piece of scratch paper. I’ll be lucky if I can read all of my handwriting later, or if it makes sense to anyone else who sees it, but at the end I came out with a direction for the remaining chapters, and even a why and how I was looking for.

So I found my own way, and now I’m back on track and excited to keep going without the nagging worry of “where am I going after this chapter?” that was deterring me.

Today I managed to write roughly 6k words so far. I needed 7k to hit par once more since I again fell behind with work. I’m going to make that before midnight. I even held myself to shutting off the wifi and logging out of all social media earlier to write for 2 hours non-stop. I managed 4.2k words in that time frame. Don’t ask how I managed it, I’m not really sure, I just kept going. Right now two of my characters are rather talkative. Which is good.

In even better news, in less than a thousand words I’ll be breaking 30k.

I know this book is going to take more than 20k to finish now, but I don’t think there’s going to be that much more than 20k left to it. I mean, I do only have about eight or nine chapters left to write. I’m determined to finish this book this year, at least the rough draft.

And I will get my first November NaNo win. I don’t care if the real craziness starts next week, I will get this win. I’ve got two days off before Thanksgiving hits. If I keep up this write 5k — or more — on days off, and still manage to write something on the days I work finally, I will be up to 40k by Thanksgiving.

I can do this. I will do this.

I just had to find my own way again first.

Crazy Wonderland

So I’m not so much drowning and behind on a lot of things anymore. Well, sort of… Okay, that’s mostly a lie. No, I lied again. It is a lie.

I am caught up on blog hops finally, so there’s that. My desk is at least semi organized yet for the most part. But, I, well, I still haven’t written a word on Fated to Darkness.

*Sigh*

It’s starting to irk me and frustrate me. Work is starting to irk and frustrate me just as much, because it is my main reason for hating everything and having no energy or will to do anything. I really want to just take a week’s vacation or so and not have to think about work at all. Especially when the holiday madness has begun and we’ve reset three-fourths of our store in a matter of three weeks or so. Talk about a headache and a half, even more so when corporate fucks up your planograms for the set to the point you can’t even remotely go by it. That would certainly explain where my headaches are coming from lately. Maybe I’ll just pack up my bags and disappear off the grid for a week or so.

Then again, if I do that, will I still not get anything done?

Knowing me, that’s a very real possibility.

I think I just need a bigger break. There’s really no breaks to retail. You have days off, sure, but very rarely are they more than one day off in a row so it’s like…you can’t even just rest on your first day of the weekend then work the next day to catch up on what you need to. No, you either don’t rest and make yourself more exhausted because you won’t have an extra day to relax, or you do rest and fall further behind.

It’s a losing battle working in retail, and it sucks monkey balls.

Anyways, the want to write is there. The want is nagging at me and screaming inside my head like the mermaids singing of Harry Potter when they’re above water, but it’s the time and energy that is sucking away at the want.

Lately, I’ve been exploring my characters a little more within roleplays I participate in. It’s giving me a ton of ideas, and a lot of excitement to write, and it’s also bringing up rising plot bunnies like a plague. Who knew writing a mentally unstable crazy character who is an insane genius would bring so many plot bunnies around?

Now I really want to write an insane character. They are TONS of fun! But I’m just not quite sure how I could make that work into any of my novels. I’m trying though, I’m toying with ideas. I want to have a crazy character or aspect of one somewhere along my books now, quite badly too. So toying around like a puppet on strings is what I shall do to make it work.

But toying with ideas means I’m also not just writing. And I should be writing. October is almost over. I need to be writing. I have goals, badly neglected goals. I need to be writing. Just keep writing, just keep writing. *Twitches*

See? Crazy is fun!

*Shakes head*

Right then. I need to go pull my head out of Crazy Wonderland and it’s multitude of reality breaking plot bunnies and do some writing before my characters decide I’m the one who should be tortured next.

Dreams and Writing

How many of you out there have had a vivid dream that turned into this amazing plot and storyline?

Probably a lot of you.

Our imagination loves to brew up crazy ideas and scenarios in our heads while we dream. The tricky part is remembering them when we wake up so we can use them.

Although, the other tricky part is making sense of whatever the hell we dreamed.

I seem to have both problems.

That could be partly due to the fact I try to analyze my own dreams, for I know they always mean something. Even if that meaning is jumbled and unclear at first. Some dreams turn out more vivid than others, some dreams I hardly remember as my alarm clock goes off and startles me out of it. And others… Others have become stuck in my head.

Lately, for reasons unknown yet, I seem to be getting a lot of dreams that I’m considering nightmares. Why? I really don’t know, and I’m not too sure what they all mean just yet. These dreams are happening to be the ones I do remember, at least parts of them. A stolen word here, a flash of images here, an emotion there. The dream catcher hanging above my bed isn’t helping this time either, though I do believe that’s due to needing to clear the negative energy from it.

Now, while none of these dreams I’m having are turning into plot bunnies or ideas. Wait, let me rephrase again. One whacky one could very well turn into a plot bunny or storyline, seeing as I was somehow my own character… But the rest aren’t going to help in any plotting.

Still, it can’t hurt to write down the dreams in a dream journal, and then who knows? Maybe one day you’ll flip through that and find a new bunny popping out at you from something old and long forgotten.

I guess I’m just really wondering how many of you out there incorporate your dream ideas into something awesome. Or how many of you have come up with your baby stories based on dreams.

I know some of my plots and storylines have come from some crazy dreams, and others have just bloomed and bred up in my mind with the plot bunny factory. I wonder if the crazy dream ideas are really just the plot bunnies getting high off something at night and hallucinating.

Actually, that sounds like a very viable reason for the dream ideas!

Someone must have slipped some PCP into their carrots for the whacky out-of-this-world dreams I get. I don’t think they went easy on the drugs either with me.

Of course, it seems that the ideas that come from dreams seem just…

Get what I mean? I think I’m going to blame the hallucinating, drugged up plot bunnies for these ones…

Knocked Up Plot Bunnies

So, my three days off was actually really productive.

Of a list of twenty things to do, I crossed off sixteen of them. I am proud of myself for that.

My notes for my camping journal took much longer than I expected, but I got all of them done. (Mostly, minus a few minor things I need that really aren’t important.) I just didn’t get to writing any of those entries.

BUT!

Shockingly, I have three days off in a row next week, too. AND I have this whole weekend off. I feel like I hit the lottery. This never happens. Unless I’m camping, that’s the only time I get that kind of time off. My paycheck will be sad, but my to do lists will be happy.

Anyways, moving on here to my real topic…

The plot bunny factory upstairs has seriously been given speed or fertility drugs or something today. No joke. I’ve just been getting idea, after idea, after idea, after idea, after idea…

*Shakes head*

You get the picture.

Some of them are totally random and I’m sitting here going “what the hell? Where did THAT even COME from?!” And others aren’t even related to what I’m currently working on and/or doing.

They’re just saying “Hey! Look at me!” And I seriously want to give them the finger and tell them to crawl back in the hole until later.

At the current moment, I suddenly have an idea for a new creature that’s slowly brewing in my mind. And actually, that one does pertain to what I’m currently working on. I owe that little bugger to a good friend of mine for sparking that little slimy demon. (No the creature is not a demon, C, because I know you’re reading this. Although it may be slimy…)

Then another just really out there idea popped into my head. One that I don’t even know how to use, or where to use. I mean, I know where I want to use it, but I have no idea how to yet. I guess I better feed that bunny some carrots so it grows bigger and gives me a better picture to work with.

Not like I need anymore plot bunnies though. I have quite enough, thank you very much, brain.

(Yeah, they don’t listen to me. They have no on and off switch. Unfortunately sometimes.)

Well, I was going to go write a bit or do something else, but at this point, I think I’m about to go journal and jot down these plot bunnies before they hop away on me, or start kicking me. Let’s see what madness I can create this time!

I always did say sanity was overrated.

Magical Creatures Galore

Mythical. Magical. Mystical.

The joys, and hardships, of writing a fantasy novel when you find yourself trying to create a creature.

I have two creatures I already have planned out and made, but I feel like I should be making some more. I have an idea for one, but I can’t seem to get how I want it to look just yet. This is where I really wish I was better at drawing freehand so I could sketch these ideas out.

But I’m not that good.

I can only draw when I have a reference picture. And if I’m creating a creature, I’m damn sure I won’t find a reference of it anywhere.

For this one I’m doing though, I’ve got the notion that I want its power to be able to put its prey in a trance like state from…something. I haven’t figured out what yet. Kind of like the Pied Piper does. The problem is figuring out the rest. (I.E. size, type of creature, looks, where in this made up world they will reside, nocturnal or not, etc. etc.)

Actually, by saying that, I think I just figured out I want this one to be nocturnal, makes it spookier for the trance like state. I believe I plan to make it a water and land creature as well, somehow. Maybe. I don’t know.

Then of course there’s the problem about what to call it.

And…

I’m probably getting ahead of myself now.

This is the fun, yet frustrating part of writing fantasy. You can do literally anything with it. But it also takes so much more work because you are creating everything from scratch. Maybe that’s why I love fantasy so much though. You can play around with it a lot to get the desired effect you want. Plus, it can make for some really interesting plots.

Either way, I think I’m going to keep brainstorming up ideas for creatures as I write. Even though they really aren’t needed just yet.

And I just gave myself a new plot bunny.

Drat.

Sparks Of Genius Called Shower Writing

So on Tuesday I had mentioned I was had finished a scene and chapter finally, but that I couldn’t remember where I had wanted the next chapter to go. Mostly because idiot me didn’t write it down ten minutes before I went to bed.

Well, my spark of genius must have returned because I remembered where I wanted that next chapter to go yesterday.

While I was in the shower oddly enough.

Maybe not oddly though. I seem to get ideas a lot when I’m in the shower, or I actually start writing a scene in my head when I’m in there. I call it shower writing, and hoping I don’t forget by the time I get out of the shower what I had just written in my head.

Forget singing in the shower, I play out scenes in my head while I’m in the shower.

Which can be kind of odd when I suddenly burst out laughing at something I thought of and someone hears me from outside the bathroom door.

Oh well. What can you do sometimes?

So now that I remember where I wanted the chapter to go (minus a few details I need to work out, which will probably just fall in place when I start writing it) I can get back to work on it. However, I work the next three days in a row so I don’t think I’ll be doing much. At least I get three days off after that though!

And I did write down where I wanted this chapter to go so I don’t forget, again.

Sometimes I actually do learn from my mistakes and idiocy. Sometimes.

Remember me saying on Tuesday I also wanted to keep up with the 1k-A-Day Challenge?

Yeah… About that…

I may have, sort of, kind of already fallen behind…

I’m not even sure what happened. I had two days off since then but I just sort of forgot? Okay, wrong wording. I think it was that I was relaxing more than I should have been and got distracted by the internet. Facebook is a major time suck. So is Wattpad. It’s Facebook more for me though. I can multi task with Wattpad, not with Facebook. It seems like it should be the other way around but it’s not for me.

Either way, I have a couple hours before work and while I have to eat ready, and eat something yet, I might have some time to squeeze in some words. Or at least get some other things out of the way. Then when I get home tonight I can get working on the next chapter.

Those are the plans. Now let’s see if I stick to them.