The Writer Side of Me

                                          

Someone asked me last week what I wrote about on my blog and my answer was "I don't know, random things."  So I figure it is time I start getting some focus, that is part of the reason I am joining the #Mywriting Process Tour.  The other reason is Della from Gut Level Christian invited me and it sounded like fun.  Its really simple,you talk about your writing process and answer these three questions:  

1 What am I working on now?

2 Why do I write what I do?

3 How does my writing process work?

Then list three bloggers who are going to post and share their links.  Finding three people to post after you is probably the hardest part. 

Right now I was working on editing the first Nightin book.  This is really a big deal because in all my five years of writing I have never edited a single one of my books.  I was planing to finish the fourth book this summer and the fifth this November but now I'm just going for the first book rewritten.  The first draft had a drop dead ending.  Where a big airship bursts into flames and crashes, the end.  I talked to an author about those kinds of endings and she advised me to write the book so that it could stand along.  That meant completly rewriting the plot for the first book.  It covers lest time story wise, but as far as I can tell it will be just as long.  So far I'm only on the third seane but I have decided to do 500 words a day for the rest of the month and maybe next mouths if things go well. 

I write for the fun of it.  I've been telling stories sense I was six or seven.  Stories were always a part of living.  If I go too long without writing I start acting strange.  Sometimes I'll be depressed and then the next day I'll be silly and random.  Writing is a challenge that I love and look forward to every time I open a blank page.  I write because I love it and I want to get better.  With each idea I think this is the book, this could be my favorite book.  I keep trying to write a book that I would love to read over again.  

My writing process?  This one is a little harder.  Well first I get an idea for a character or a setting or a plot and play with it.  I'll get to know the character or do some back story on a setting.  Throwing some 'what if''s into a plot is really fun.  When I have a character that I like and think can tell a story I just start writing.  I find out more about the story and characters by writing them.  So far I have not been able to start a story from just a setting which is a disappointment because I have a really cool made up world that has history's and mythology's and the beginnings of several languages but no characters have caught my attention.  Anyway, so I start writing with a plot most likely a character and the story unravels from there.  Unless it is the Nightin story that took me a year to find a plot that fit the characters.  When I am working on a book I generally work on it till it gets done.  I learned how to write from NaNoWriMo so writers block is practically nonexistent.  I can only remember one case of writers block that I had a few years.  It was between books and I could not get a good idea to work on.  Back to the subject though.  I write till its done and then I move on to the next story, some times I'll plot the story first most of the time I just jump into the story.   

Well that's all I think.  This was kind of fun.  Ellie Moore from Jabbering of a few teenage authors (to be) will be posting next.  I am afraid I failed to dig up the other two bloggers to follow my post so if your reading this and want to write one to, just leave a comment and I can put your link up.  You would be doing me a favor.

Thanks for reading and have a blessed week.

Morgan J

P.S.

What do you all think of the new title?  Is it hard to understand or does prudence sound like a name instead of another word for common sense?  I would love to get your opinion on it.

Whispers of Research

I'm late.  So sorry.  I did write a post though.  I had a post ready to go on Wednesday.  It was all done and I even pushed the publish button, and . . . . nothing.  For what ever reason the internet would not work.  I tried all that day and it never took.  In the evening I drove over to Starbucks and it still would not post.  I have not had a chance to get to another internet sores till just now.  But as it happened I forgot to bring my little touch pad with my post on it so I have to write up a new one.  No matter it was just rambling about my favorite character. 
Well this is the secant week of living in an apartment and it seems like everything was going wrong not with the apartment but with me.  On Monday my right eye was so swollen and irritated that I could barely function.  So on Tuesday I went to the emergency care center.  They told me to go to the eyes doctor.  On Wednesday I started loosing my voice, and when you work with kids that is quite a handicap.  Thursday I went to the eye doctor and he told me I had several Corneal ulcers that means eye drops every waking hour.  Friday I could barely talk above a whisper.  And that brings us to Saturday.  To day my voice is better and my eye is good I just can't ware my contacts which means everything beyond arms reach is blurry.  But I am feeling better then I have been all week so to day is the best day of the week for more than one reason.
I've started doing some research for my current project.  The Nightin story is a steampunk, which is Victorian historical fiction with a little syfy mixed in.  I got a book from the library and I've been watching movies set in the Victorian period.  My grandmother found a steampunk movie for me called The Adventurer: Curse of the Midas Box.  One of the characters named Captain Will Charity reminded me of one of the characters from my book.  Dapper, witty, always cheerful under the hardest situation, at lest that is what I think of him as.  To someone else he may just be a crazy young man who doesn't know what he's saying.  That movie and the fact that I am editing or rewriting the first book of this series has pushed me to do more research on my genre.  I have to pay more attention to how they talk and manners of that society.  How did people in that time period talk?  That is what I am trying to learn and hopefully discover what book Flame Nightin would bother to come to Dart for that could not be found in Early's library. 
With the wave of the hand and a flick of the wrist I will wish you all adieu till next time.  I think Saturdays will work for me best, so not next Saturday but the Saturday after that I will write you again.
Morgan J

Secant Draft

Hello all,
I'm still alive.  You probably forgot all about me and my tiny blog.  No matter.  I forgive you.  Life goes on.
Now I have to be completely honest with you readers.  My writing group gave us all some homework; to publish a blog.  So this is me doing my long overdue assignment.  Also people have told me as a want-to-be author, that I need to make connections.  Here's me putting myself out there.  Do you feel the connection?  Me nether.  I'll just have to keep trying. 
As part of the homework I am revamping the whole blog, new title new look, everything I can think of; the secant draft of the blog if you will.  I will also be posting every two weeks.  That doesn't sound like very much but if you consider that before I have rarely ever posted more then once every two months, this seems like quite the overflow. 
I'm not sure what day of the week my next post will come on, but for sure some time two weeks from now.  I can believe I just committed to that.  Maybe its because I'm writing this at 1 in the morning.  I get a little strange late at night.  When it gets about 12:00 I start doing and saying things that I wouldn't normally do if I were sane.  I better publish this to night before my sanity returns to me and I chicken out.  If I wait I will never get this started.

So on that note, good night or good morning which ever one it is, I write you again in two weeks.
Morgan J

A Snippet of NaNo's Novel

This is rather late I know.  Sorry.  
I reached the 50,000 word mark on the 27th and still have about 10,000 more words to go before I reach the end of the book.  When I started writing I had a title for it but half way through November I realized that the title I had come up with did not fit the book anymore, so I'll have to come up with another one.   For now it is called the Nightin book (because it is about a family whose last name is Nightin) or more accurately the First Nightin book, sense this is only book one of a series of fiveish books.  
Journey is the youngest of ten brothers and is my LEST favorite of all the Nightin family.  If I could get ride of him I would but the family demands his continuing on the way he is.  So I have to be satisfied with locking him in a dungeon in the beginning of  second book, and there I will leave him till half way through the fourth book.  And if you're wondering what a Thylacine is you should Google it, I did not make it up.  

“This mighty animal first came to this continent on a pirate air ship as a oddity for the captain's wife who had been left at home.”  The man droned on, Journey beginning to doubt if he wasn't really a mechanical man after all.  He sounded so precise and stiff and the words came so unnaturally out of his mouth it could have been bits and pieces of a conversation put together to make a different sentence it sounded so awkward.
“The pirate was known then under the name of Lear Foxcroft and his ship was the fastest thing in the air at that time.”  He droned on.  The tall man seemed to have gotten side tracked on the history of this pirate Lear Foxcroft and his fast ethermarauder flown under the name of Misery Drum.  Journey again searched the room with his eyes.  It must have been the twentieth or thirtieth time but still there was no sign of this Thylacine and he began to doubt if this was little more than a lesson in the history of the creature instead of an actual demonstration of it.
“Lear Foxcroft deposited a pair of these creatures with his wife a little over thirty years ago and they became pets to the very fashionable young lady.  People admired them and they became quite popular among the higher class of people in that city as a pet or show animal.  But one day,”  The man paused in mid sentence as if something new had suddenly caught his attention.  Journey shifted his weight impatiently.  The abrupt ending rankling his patience even though a moment before he had been a little irritated with this strange man for droning on about the animal instead of showing it like Journey wanted.  The man seemed frozen in place. His long wavy hair, the only thing on him that moved, stirring faintly in a slight draft.
“It was the day Lear Foxcroft himself retired from pirating.”  He picked up again suddenly, but his words did not connect.  He had skipped over the last sentence entirely.   Journey frowned as much as to show his disapproval as in an effort to catch up with where the story had jumped to.  The young man’s reaction seemed to make no impression on the tall man in the top hat though, because he continued on as if he had not just dropped his last sentence.
“And it was the day of his young son's seventh birthday.  The Thylacine had been blessed with a litter of young ones of their own and Lear Foxcroft made the mistake of giving his boy one of the young as a birthday present.  Before this time the Thylacine were known to be gentle, obedient animals if well trained and the Thylacine of Lear Foxcroft were the best trained animals around.  But, when that boy went into the pen with his father, the animals turned on him and instead of going for the father, attacked the boy.  Lear Foxcroft pulled his son out of there with only a few bites and scratches.  Safe, but for the terror of the animals that stayed with him for the rest of his life.  That incident broke the Thylacine's popularity.  No more were they a treasured pet and animal to show of as proof of your wealth and high standing in the society of that city. Now they were a despised creatures to be killed and exterminated.”  The man in the top hat grew more adamant.  His voice began to lose the mechanical sound and he began to sound more like a narrator reading a vivid and exciting book rather than someone supposed to be giving an audience the history of the Thylacine.
“Lear Foxcroft himself shot all the animals he owned and his example was taken by almost all of the rich and well to do family's of the city.  Some Thylacine were exported,.  A few were sold.  A very small number were even turned out into the mountains around here to fend for themselves.  They were dropped like an out dated hat.  Tossed like a wilted rose from the button hole.  Forsaken and forgotten faster than it had taken them to grow so popular.”  His voice had grown almost sad.  A single, silent tear hung delicately at the corner of one eye, despite the still stony appearance of his features.
“Now,” he started again he voice reverting back to it's former mechanical tones instantly as if he had not sounded almost human just a second before.  “The Thylacine is almost extinct and lives mostly in the dark jungles of the Amazon were it was first found.  Some do live in the remotest parts of the mountains around here but so far only a very few have ever been seen.  It is supposed that most of the few that were released died and that those that did survive might have crossbred with some of the other creatures native to this climate.”  Here the man fell silent and the show seemed done, not that it had been much of a show.  Journey started to leave, reaching for the door handle disappointed with the way the room had turned out, but a sudden scraping of the wooden crate on the floor made him turn back to see what had moved.  One of the wooden crates that lay strewn about the floor had been moved.  He knew that from having studied them so often when he first came in and during the strange man’s little speech   The object had been empty before, he was sure of that, but now he could see a long thin tail protruding out of it like a dead snake.

Nyctophobia in a Snippet

I really need to post something on here, and sense I have nothing much to say other than my family just grow by two new kittens, and I am starting Bible Collage this week, I thought I'd post a snippet of a story I have been turning around in my mind for awhile.  I've been reluctant to write it though for several reasons, but the main one is that I have absolutely no experience in this kind of topic.  The story is about a person who is terrified of the dark, one day there is an accident, and their eyes are damaged leaving them temporarily blinded.  So here it is.


There is something about the dark that always scars people.  The knowledge that the unknown is so close to them.  That the darkness hides uncounted terrors that are waiting for you to shout you eyes.  It is a childish fear, one that should not bother an adult.  I keep telling my self that, but it does not help, nothing helps.  It is called Nyctophobia, and they tell me that it is triggered by "the brain’s disfigured perception of what would or could happen when in a dark environment".  That knowledge did not make it anything easier though when I had my accident   

Yesterday there was accident at gas station that resulted in a explosion.  I was too close and some how the light or the heat or something burned my eyes.  Now I'm trapped.  Not in a single room or building, but behind my own eyes.  That explosion burned the retina of my eyes and now I'm blind.  The doctors say it is temporary, that they will heal in a few months, but how can I survive those few months?  Blackness is all around me now and there is nothing I can do to get away from it.  I'm trapped.  Forced by the bandages around my head to carry the blackness that I hate around with me.  

I never thought of it till just know, but how could this person be writing this when their blind?  That does not really matter right now though, I'm more worried about making it sound believable.  What do you think?  Is it too stiff, and calm?  Anyone out there really scared of the dark, because I personally am not and it would be nice to get some feed back from someone who really is.  Hope you all enjoyed it short as it was.

Have a blessed day
Morgan J

The Plot Progresses

Now I'm really getting started, finally.  After I finished Hunting Peace I experienced a mild case of writers block.  The second book was just not coming along, I had characters but no plot, I had problems but no solutions.  A few days ago I was complaining about my lack of ideas and the multitude of surplus characters that I had and my older sister suggested killing of one of the extras.  I didn't give it much thought then but yesterday I was playing with the idea a little bit and peaces started falling into place.  There was my plot and there was the title, all I had to do was kill off that one character.  So to day I'm killing Mitchel.  It's turning out to be sadder then I first thought, Mitchel was such a nice guy I'll miss him.  I'm kind of reluctant to kill him off but than again he needs to die for the plot to progress.  Guess I'll just have to keep a box of tissues close and plow through it.  sniff!

You all have a very blessed day

Morgan J

Finished and Only Beginning

I finished Hunting Peace last night, and in finishing it I found out that there had to be a second book.  So, now it's the series Hunting Peace books one and two.  I'll have to come up with a name for the first book, but for now it's just book one.  This is cool though, I've never had a series before.  Last night after I rapped up the first book, I was brain storming for the second and all these exciting ideas started fitting in and answering unanswered questions left over from the first.  During March I'll probably start working on it, and maybe if things work out I'll get a lot of it written.  A new month is here with a new book to write, new characters to meet, new plot developments to uncover, and an unknown history to figure out.  Can you tell I'm excited?  Here we go!