Upon the Wings of Greater Things
The creative endeavours of Starla Huchton
I swear I meant to do this post weeks ago. December has really gotten away from me!
NaNoWriMo was a HUGE success for me this year. November resulted in a higher word count than I’ve ever had in such a short period of time. I’m still pretty astounded at my numbers, to be honest. [Read more…]
I’m a few days late on this, but I’ve been playing catch up on NaNoWriMo.
November 15 was the half way mark. I was sitting at just over 20,000 of 50,000 words that day and had to get moving. Thanks to some word sprints and encouraging words from my friends and fellow writers, I pushed through some of the detailed world-building stuff I was working on and knocked out over 10,000 words in about 48 hours. As of this moment I’m sitting at almost 31,000 words. \o/
READY, SET, WRITE!
We are a GO for NaNoWriMo 2012!
I admit it: we skipped over a lot of the workbook. They kinda got bored of it and I didn’t want to burn them out on that to the detriment of their November stories. I haven’t given up on it completely, but we’re setting it aside in favor of actual story crafting for now.
I’ve been remiss in posting, so I’m playing a little catch up today. Today’s post will be about the villains the Minions have created for their November novels. We’ve started working on the actual plot sections, but I’m leaving that post for another day.
Not a great deal to report today, but some things of interest.
Summary of Pages:
Another day, another evening of pre-NaNo prep work with Minions v1.0 and v2.0.
In looking over the workbook pages to come, I saw what the next “assignment” was and instantly cringed. It was going to be too much like homework. While this is fine when you’re working in a school setting, which is what they are designed for, it’s not really ideal for a parent guiding their children through novelling. Since this is a first time through for us as a family, I’m keeping plans loose. It’s a learning process for sure. I don’t want this to be “work” for my girls, in the way that school is, so I’m doing my best to stress that this is fun.
So it’s been awhile since I gave much thought to The Dreamer’s Thread, but with the launching of the spiffy new podiobooks.com site, along with a slew of email updates on the topic, I got to thinking about my old TDT cover. In particular, how much my design work has changed since I first put it together. This thinking was prompted by an email about covers from Podiobooks Godfather Evo Terra. I sent out a reply email explaining about my design stuff, when I realized that the one cover folks probably identify most with me is my absolute oldest work and not my best. I can see those other podiobook authors reading my email, checking me out on Podiobooks, and then promptly scoffing at my hubris.
That absolutely does not fly with me.
So, I set to myself to the task, worked my Photoshop mojo, and gave my first novel a make over. Because everyone knows a badly dressed book is far worse than a naked one.
The end result? Well, I’ll let you decide for yourself.
A while back (like late spring 2011), I was approached by Alex White to see if I might be interested in writing a short story set in the world of The Gearheart. As an admirer of his work and always one up for a writing challenge, I accepted wholeheartedly, turning in the finished story in August ’11. Last winter, Alex started up a Chip-In fund to assist in paying for his son’s developmental assistance and gave this story and one other as one of the donor rewards.
The first part of that story is now live in podcast form.
An interview I gave Michell Plested for the Get Published podcast went live last night. I always love giving interviews, but I still feel very strange when I’m asked for one. It’s a funny combination of feeling confused, flattered, excited and nervous.
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So, that Dragon*Con thing happened again this past weekend. I don’t have quite the epic story of epicness that I did last year, but here’s a few little things from the weekend.