Catch up's cause I've been gone awhile x

Catch up..

I am well and truly immersed in the editing process. I'm going to call it the editing adventure, makes it sound way more interesting. My first draft journey may be over but the bookish journey has only just begun.
I moved out a week ago which had the potential to make writing complicated. To be honest though it hasn't. The capitol has been treating me well. Apart from the general study link and flat hunting stresses I have little more to do but familiarize myself with a new city and edit, edit, edit. Admittedly it took me a couple of days to really get into the flow.. I spent a good amount of time looking at funny cats and complaining about grammar and how crap editing was compared to writing. The day after the first draft was finished i started to edit but really achieved very little. Now however I am rolling.  
As per usual I have discovered the most complicated method's of editing and dived right on in. My method includes dragging my way through the whole book twice, changing and weaving then grammatically adjusting. It's been great re-discovering tiny things that I had forgotten about.

The last few days of first-drafting were intense. This was my computer the moment I finished. And yes, I am one of those annoying people who takes photos of useless things. It was just such a mess that i couldn't resist. Unfortunately this picture doesn't show the pencils jammed between the keys of my computer or the piles of paper on the floor behind my chair.
I have missed having a desk, moving off into the wide-world has it's downsides.. no furniture. However all that editing has demanded from me so far is coffee, time, a couch and my lap-top.

I did manage to haul all of my chapter notes up here -thankfully. (picture, and above view of their awesomeness).
And I have had several long conversations about literature to keep my mind ticking over. Wellington has many wonderfully like-minded people. We have been nana-ing around reading books and watching game of thrones. Anyway, the book ticks on and I have many things to blog about when I can manage to organize myself into a flat and study.
Uni starts soon (first class is 'writing') which should be a riot.
xx

Finishes the first draft...

I know that I was going to post 'more often'. When people say that it's almost always a lie. See this whole moving up North thing has been consuming a lot of my mental effort.. and time, mainly time. I've had a horse to worry about relocating. A boring job. Friends who are already heading back to school and moving to new cities.. Birthday's, wedding's.. it's all excuses of course. The honest truth is that in that final 'crunch' I didn't really feel like writing anything else. (Note the past tense and the fact that I am writing now) Yes... I finished the book. I finished writing my book.

Now what.

Actually I'm super lame. I finished the final chapter, got really excited for a few minutes, skipped around the house -found it empty, made coffee, got ready for work, went to work which was reaaallly quiet, made ice-creams... Tad anti-climatic, Total buzz-kill. Death of buzz.


Now that I am onto that editing stage (I actually came home from work and opened the prologue, away we go back to the start). I'm not entirely sure what to blog about. I mean I can blog about editing but that sounds unexciting even to me.. I could be a real YA Fiction blogger and write reviews I suppose. That would fit in rather nicely with my studies this year. That and editing. My kind of fun!

So February 14th 2012 'Tellan's' last first-draft words were written. Initially it was omg moment. I hadn't realized how close I was to the end. How does it make me feel? Surreal. really. I was so caught up in the story, It was rather emotional those last few chapters really. For a lot of reasons. All of a sudden I was telling myself to sum the story up in 400 words. It did it 537, sat back and felt a little weird. There's no words that can describe that moment when you finish a story that you dreamed up as a 12 year old. Of course my 12-year-old brain would probably have done things much differently.. I don't know what to say other than A series of well-intended swear words and a rather freakish grin.I feel like I should be celebrating or something alas no. It's like any other day.

Of course I left it on a wee bit of a cliff hanger.. which made me want to keep writing. Book two is going to be a shocker!

On an un-related note I recently had to stop and go back after deciding I needed to switch one character for his sister... That turned out to be an epic pain in the everywhere... Consider going through a book, finding every mention of a particular character and changing every name, he, his and him for another name she, her's and her.

I wont be changing it back that's for sure.

Thanks again to Oliver (my wall) who knows the most about my characters next to me.. To SAM (I wrote 'sam' and spell check game me SAM. right.) who has consumed my book and put up with me messaging her about it constantly. Annd to my followers and Auntie Wendy and Sarah and Kristen and James.. And everybody. Just you wait. Now I'm editing you are all in for it... and I love you all.

this distracted me from posting this earlier...

waffling..

So I woke up this morning curled up at the end of my bed, still in a dressing gown, Ipod headphones in my ears with a pencil stuck to my face. Good look.... The floor was monopolized by my giant book time-line, two half-finished drawings and the plans for the end of my book.... That's right. The end... Half of a short chapter, One very long one and two very short ones and that's it. Done.

chapter the 27th is being dominated.

I had a great time away from civilization for five days. That included three in which I didn't have my lap-top on... or two maybe. We ate, drank, swum, sunbathed, explored, and witnessed a beautiful wedding. Nice to see the sounds before I head off into the real world again in a few weeks.
I  hadn't actually gone a day where I hadn't written a part of my book in months... even just in a notebook.. and it was very weird. Anyway, I got home and made up for it by writing until I lost my marbles... (as you can tell from all these elipses...). All's I know is that I'm back in the frackin Ice-cream shop everyday till the end of forever or at least until I move to the mother ship in a few weeks. (Wellington) then I'll be editing like a squirrel on speed for a while....

Hmm. OK. So I really don't like it when authors write books (or series) and they're like 'it came to me in a dream'. But I now have be extraordinarily hypocritical, because I was thinking about this other little run-off series that I would love to write one day and then I dreamed about it.. but in the dream everything was different.. the setting was different and they were calling people by different titles. I think it was brains way of telling me that I have to write that story next.. and that it has to be post-apocalyptic...

Going into the Wilderness...

Impromptu blog post. I'm about to bask in the glory of mistletoe bay for five days. Thought i'd better touch base before I shoot out of town.
I'm going to be yabbering on about bookish things more often for the next couple of weeks. My story is taking it's final breaths before the plunge.

Firstly, cheers to Tom, my six-hundredth viewer since i started nattering on here a few months ago. Thank's for pointing out my bad spelling and pitiful attempts at grammar. I have now changed the language of my blog so that it doesn't spell-check all my words into American-English. I did that for you. No promises on the grammar front though.

I'm edging my way into the final climax of my book. A few more chapters and I'll be back at the beginning, editing this baby like a mad woman. The chapter I'm finishing at this current moment (or procrastinating from..) is chock full of fun, some purple seeds, a wolf-hat or five, kitten faces, more rain and a handful of flaming arrows....

anyway I don't have anything more to say other than a huge thanks to Sam, who has plowed her way through a chunk of my chapters in the last few days and has responded with exclamation marks, kind words and just the right amount of enthusiasm..

This picture never ceases to cheer me up.  

This one has clues in it!

I'm contemplating how i should move my small army of pens to Wellington. Also discussing ferry's and how many bags i need for all of my bits and pieces... getting very close this whole moving business. Which means that completion of my first draft is only weeks away. weeks. I'm going to cry a wee bit now.

Today while i was chatting with a Wellington friend and trying to start chapter twenty-something, she informed me that the four chapters she had read were the 'best story she had read in quite a long while.' I considered this happily whilst trying to stop my cat from scaling a woolen coat into the top of my wardrobe. Ultimately i failed on the cat-front and she sat up there perusing me with her little yellow eyes. (she's up to something).
It was around then that I was gathered up to help clip the wings of the families hens... (I wonder what hens would think of us if they knew we ate their eggs? I mean it's pretty weird...). Being the best inheritor of the 'small-gene' I was commissioned to crawl into the smallest chicken-village, where i crouched for a while trying to convince the rooster that he should hand over his woman-folk. Negotiations failed. My Characters were given a chicken lunch.

Here... this is a new synopsis for all the people who want to read it. for those who don't scroll down to the unicorn, the mermaid and the army of man-eating-squirrels.
I have still kept it vague. Iv'e not included names, places yadayada, but it's longer than the last. (it has full stops at least).

synopsis in more than one sentence 

The story follows a member of the misplaced...
At five moths old, she makes the snaggers list- a list of children hunted by an old enemy. She's a future threat.
Quickly she is removed. hidden from the world by a Murean with a horse called Ben (there's a name hah). For thirteen years she is raised in the harbor, no status but orphan-status, no family but her tutor and minder.

Like all Children in the empire. She is taught to fight. As orphan-status she learns to fight with whatever she can get her hands on. If she cant afford a broadsword she'll have to learn to survive one.

On her fourteenth birthday She knows that the days of dreaming are over. She will be moved into employ. Employ worthy of her status, but that isn't to be...

Her Murean show's up with snaggers on his tail and news that shocks her life into a new trajectory. Port-ella and a city protected by a wall...
She is taken to a new tutor, given a chance to prove her worth and fight for the chance to break free from orphan-status.

Not long after arrival the walls begin to crumble. An old enemy has been picking away at them, now he is starting to gain the upper hand.

Faced with a series of truths, minor and major tragedies she (our protagonist) eventually discovers her own kind of power. The really, really powerful kind.

She's thrust into training and eventually takes her bow to meet her chance at redemption, and a chance at revenge for the family she never had and the fate she never knew. She meets truth instead.

The mist clears, she cracks a riddle and she realizes that the only piece missing from the enemies puzzle was her. She rides to meet a demon and ultimately destroy a box that has sucked the 'safe' out of 'safety'.
 
the books ends with her success, her failure and the start of a new life as a missing-missy.