no more! and something else!

So, I just decided that I'm not going to do that whole "How to write a novel in 100 days or less" thing.. It's getting old! If you want to read the list, just google that title. I haven't been following it much anyway! Ultimately, I would love to write a book. Or at least a collection of creative non-fiction.. I'd really like to expand on the idea with my Grandma. But we'll see how that goes. Cody's been trying to get me to paint lately as well. He bought me all this fun stuff to do my acrylic painting for Christmas and I've only painted like 5 times since! I'd like to figure out a way to put my collages and painting together, so if anyone has ideas, let's hear 'em! I found this survey, so I'm gonna fill it out!

3 Joys:
1. The husband!
2. My Family! (friends are included in that!)
3. Nature!

3 Fears:
1. Losing my loved ones.
2. Dying.
3. The dark.

3 Goals:
1. Get rid of some more debt.
2. Lose some weight before we have kids.
3. Becoming more active with church.

3 Obsessions or for lack of a better word, 3 things you love doing:
1. Watching movies/shows with Cody.
2. Listening to my immediate and extended family interact with each other.
3. Reading (mostly historical fiction).

5 Random facts about myself:
1. I eat the candy shell of M&M's before the chocolate.
2. I can't stand (like, can't focus on anything else) my nails being past a certain length.
3. I haven't been single for more than a day since October 2004 (Cody and I were married in February 2006 and had only dated since June 2005)
4. I am so easily entertained..it's ridiculous!
5. I am so sarcastic with my little brother Jeremy, you'd think we hate each other.

Day 16

"The reader has to believe that your characters exist or could exist — and they need to be distinctively drawn. And nothing better defines characters than their actions, their purpose in life. Their purpose may be good or evil. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the reader sees their actions and purpose, believes them, and is continuously interested in them.
Do not write a story peopled with a cast of thousands. Write a tale about one, two or three memorable characters, all of them filled with purpose."

(reference - How to write a novel in 100 days or less - google)

Days 12-15

"Pick your characters first, as they are harder to pick than a story.
When writing, the plot may or may not change, but the characters will develop and have a life of their own. As your characters develop, they’ll take on distinct personalities, and as with good friends, you’ll know in certain situations what they will or will not do.
Mystery writer Oakley Hall says that a writer must “listen to the demands of his characters, who, as they begin to come to life, may insist upon a different fate than the givens seem to require.”

"Get a bunch of 5 by 7 cards and put each character’s name at the top. Next, think about the role each plays in your story, and what kind of person each is: age, education, place of birth, hot-headed, funny, fat, ugly. What are their quirks? Do they wash their hands 500 times a day? Do they hear voices? Are they kind to kids but love to torture cats? Put it down, put down so much that you finally come to know these characters intimately. Alfred Hitchcock would write down his scenes on index cards, one scene to a card. That way, as he said, by the time he was ready to shoot the film, he was already done.
Some characters will be major ones, around whom the story will pivot; others will play bit parts, but these will be critical too, as every player must have a reason for being in the story. If they don’t have a reason for being in your novel, they’ll slow down the story, and slowness bores readers."

"

Most novels are written to a formula, especially big best sellers. For example, John Baldwin, co-author of The Eleventh Plague: A Novel of Medical Terror, developed a simple formula that he used to structure his novel. His ten-step formula is:
	1.		The hero is an expert.
	2.		The villain is an expert.
	3.		You must watch all of the villainy over the shoulder of the villain.
	4.		The hero has a team of experts in various fields behind him.
	5.		Two or more on the team must fall in love.
	6.		Two or more on the team must die.
	7.		The villain must turn his attention from his initial goal to the team.
	8.		The villain and the hero must live to do battle again in the sequel.
	9.		All deaths must proceed from the individual to the group: i.e., never say that the bomb exploded and 15,000 people were killed. Start with “Jamie and Suzy were walking in the park with their grandmother when the earth opened up.”
	10.		If you get bogged down, just kill somebody.
More about formula. When Ernest Hemminway started as a young reporter for the Kansas City Star, he was given a style sheet with four basic rules:
	•		Use short sentences.
	•		Use short first paragraphs.
	•		Use vigorous English.
	•		Be positive, never negative
Asked about these rules years later, he said, “Those were the best rules I ever learned in the business of writing. I’ve never forgotten them. No one with any talent, who feels and writes truly about the things he is trying to say, can fail to write well if he abides by them.”

"Develop your characters and your plot together. You can’t do one well without the other. Your characters are not wooden people who just dropped magically out of the sky. They are critical elements of the drama you are creating. They must do something logical or illogical (which is what plot is all about) that adds to your story, and moves it to its ultimate climax. Never, never separate characters from plot."

(reference: How to write a novel is 100 days or less - google)

Day 11

"Begin by writing about what you know, if not the novel itself, then something about the place or people in your novel. It’s a lot easier to get started on your book if you are writing about people, places, and things with which you have already grown familiar."

(reference: How to write a novel in 100 days or less - google)

day 10

"Before we leave the problem of finding your story, let me debunk another cliché about novel writing: Write only about something you know.
You’re heard that before. It’s nonsense. Tom Clancy had never been a submarine commander before he wrote The Hunt For Red October. And it’s a safe bet that Richard Bach had never been a seagull before he wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
Instead of writing about something you know, you can write about something you love. It doesn’t matter what it is, just love it. For example, Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha, had lived in Japan and was working for an English-language magazine in Tokyo when in 1982 he got the idea for Memoirs. In 1986, after earning a creative writing degree from Boston University, he began researching geishas and discovered “a subculture with its own strange rules.” It took him ten years and several drafts before he sold the book to Alfred A. Knopf for $250,000."

(reference: How to write a novel is 100 days or less - google)

Day 9

"Don’t be afraid to write down scenes or sections that don’t lead anywhere. Don’t discard them if they aren’t leading anywhere. Follow the advice of Joan Didion. She pins them on a board with the idea of picking them up later. Quite early in her novel, A Book of Common Prayer, she says, she wrote about Charlotte Douglas going to the airport. It was a couple of pages of prose that she liked, but she couldn’t find a place for it. “I kept picking this part up and putting it in different places,” she writes, “but it kept stopping the narrative; it was wrong everywhere, but I was determined to use it.” She finally found a spot for it in the middle of the book. “Sometimes you can get away with things in the middle of the book.'"

(reference: How to write a novel in 100 days or less - google)

Day 8

"Imitation can lead to originality. Do short exercises imitating different styles. Try on a dozen voices until you find one that fits. Ape the sure hand of a master. But remember this: write from your own experience. Your experience is unique. As John Braine, author of Room at the Top, wrote, “If you’re to be heard out of all those thousands of voices, if your name is going to mean something out of all those thousands of names, it will only be because you’ve presented your own experience truthfully.'"

(How to write a novel is 100 days or less - google)

Days 5, 6, & 7

"It doesn’t matter what kind of book you decide to write. There are no rules other than that the story has to be very, very interesting. It can be exciting, scary, fun, funny or sad — but it must not bore the reader." (Day 5)

"Analyze and learn. Take your favorite novel of the type that you want to write and read it again, as if it were a how-to manual for becoming a millionaire. Then read it again, breaking the book down into sections. Outline the action on large sheets of paper that you pin to your office wall." (Day 6)

"Although there are no rules about story ideas, I would offer you one caution: think small. One of the worst mistakes most beginning novelists make is thinking big, trying to come up with an end-of-the-world story, in the belief that big is better. That’s not true. Keep your story idea small and focused.
Look into your creative soul and search for a little story but one that has real meaning to you. We are all part of the human family. If you create a story that has deep meaning to you, chances are it will have deep meaning for the rest of us." (Day 7)

(How to write a novel is 100 days or less - google)

Day 4

"What kind of novel appeals to you? What really gets your juices flowing? Is it a good murder mystery, science fiction, a thriller, romance, general fiction?
Alice Munro is considered by many to be the best short-story writer in the English language. Her books sell about 30,000 copies a year. She is a writer other writers admire for her technical skills and the purity of her style. She is also known for the complex structure of her stories. A typical Alice Munro story might begin at a point that most writers would consider the end, then jump to a time ten years later, then back again. But what is most interesting about Alice Munro — who lives in a small town in southern Canada — is that her stories are about ordinary people: their secrets, their memories of acts of violence, their sexual longings.
Think of what to write from what is around you, from what you know and care about."

(reference: How to write a novel is 100 days or less)
http://www.peacecorpswriters.org/pages/depts/resources/resour_writers/100daysbook/day004.html

Day 3

"In the first week, decide upon the story you are going to write. You might not work out every detail, but today you are going to begin the process. You are not going to procrastinate — procrastination is your enemy. Matisse advised his students, 'If you want to be a painter, cut out your tongue.' The time has come to stop merely talking about writing your novel. Get started planning it now."

(reference - How to write a novel is 100 days or less)
http://www.peacecorpswriters.org/pages/depts/resources/resour_writers/100daysbook/day003.html

some writing (creative non-fiction)

It's 8:30am and I wake to find that she has already gotten up to begin her morning routine. As I sneak up the stairs, I can hear the faint whisper of her reverent, consistent prayer from the kitchen. When I'm sure I won't disturb her, I slip out from behind the soft couch and wait for her to notice I'm awake. With her sing-song voice, she wishes me a good morning and kisses me softly on my forehead.
I run my fingers through my long matted hair and remember that I had fallen asleep with it damp the night before. Normally, I would ask her to brush it for me - it was too long for my short arms now - but arthritis now made it too painful for her.
Smelling the familiar eggs and toast, I shuffle into the kitchen. I glance at her scriptures as I make my way to my stool, noting that she made it from 2nd Nephi to Enos since the last weekend I had spent with her two weeks previous. I don't understand how she can read so fast! I can't read more than a chapter without nodding off...
"How dark do you want your toast? Did you want some scrambled and one with yoke for dipping?"
"Umm, not too dark. And good idea!" I pour the orange juice and chuckle to myself. She always knows what I want. Why doesn't she ever have real milk, not just powdered?
I take a sip and ask, "Grandma, why don't you ever have real milk?"
"I can't digest it anymore, so I have the powdered kind and I can get the vitamins without the tummy-ache," she smiles as she slides the warm eggs in front of me. "Do you want to eat these in the other room with your lap-tray? Go turn on your cartoons and I'll get one down for you, dear."

Day 2

"Carve out specific time to write. This is important because over the course of writing a novel, you’ll get discouraged, bored, angry, or otherwise fed up, and when you start feeling that way, you’ll need clearly defined patterns to keep yourself working.
On occasion you may have to shift your writing times to deal with other demands in your life, but fight to keep them as regular as you can.
What do I mean by specific times?
Two hours each morning and each evening, and one eight-hour day every weekend, for example. Decide how much time you will spend writing each week, and then do it. Many would-be novelists defeat themselves because they set a schedule but then don’t stick to it. Be realistic in the time you plan, and then live by it."

http://www.peacecorpswriters.org/pages/depts/resources/resour_writers/100daysbook/day002.html
(reference - How to write a novel in 100 days or less)

Novel.

Day One:
"The great New Yorker editor and writer, E.B. White, said when accepting the National Medal for Literature, “A writer’s courage can easily fail him . . . I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.”
On this your first day of writing your novel, make a promise to yourself that you are going to do it. This is critical. Without that commitment, you may as well save your pencils and paper. It isn’t going to happen. Remember, write as often as you can. That’s what writers do — they write."

http://www.peacecorpswriters.org/pages/depts/resources/resour_writers/100daysbook/day001.html
(reference: How to write a novel in 100 days or less)