Totally Random Tuesdays: Help!

Welcome back to Totally Random Tuesdays! Firstly, I want to start by thanking everybody who helped me top 2000 page hits! You are the best – and a big, huge thanks to all my repeat viewers! Considering how hard it is for most blogs to tread water, and that this blog just launched last September, I’m really excited to see that so many people have come here. (At least, I hope it’s not just one person who has come to my blog 2000 times.)

Since all of you are so awesome, I would love it if you could help me out by taking a quick survey. It’s only nine questions. I really want to make sure that I am helping as many writers as I can, so if you help me out today, you’ll help me help other writers! (Should I write the word ‘help’ one more time?) If everybody who reads this post would help me out, that would make my day!

Please copy and paste the survey into the comments and remove all of the answers except for yours. If you’d like to expand on any of the questions, feel free to do so. I have anonymous commenting enabled, so if you don't have a Google account or want to leave your name, that's no problem.  I need all the feedback I can get!

1. How old are you?

a. under 14

b. between 14 and 22 (target audience)

c. over 22

2. Do feel like the content of this blog is

a. too complicated for the target audience

b. too dumbed down

c. about right

3. How did you find this blog?

a. Facebook

b. Twitter

c. Google Plus

d. Search Engine

e. other

4. Are you a friend and/or family member of the author?

a. yes

b. yes, though we became friends through correspondence

c. no

5. Would you describe yourself as a writer?

a. no, but would like to be a writer at some point

b. yes, but not a ‘serious’ writer

c. no, and I probably never will

d. yes, absolutely

6. Would you recommend this blog to your friends/family?

a. yes

b. no

7. Do you find the content on this blog to be useful and/or entertaining?

a. yes

b. no

c. I don’t have internet, but I love surveys.  

8. How often do you read this blog? 

a. this is my first time here

b. regularly

c. occasionally

9. What kind of things would you like to see covered in the future?

Thank you so much! Once again, you guys are the best!

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Please share this on your favorite social network so I can help as many writers as possible!

Totally Random Tuesday: Cookies!

Welcome back to Totally Random Tuesdays...so random, you'll never know when it's coming (other than a Tuesday at some point) or what on earth it's going to be about!  

(Today's post isn't about writing at all, so if this is your first trip to my blog, scroll down to "older posts" for posts that actually do have to do with writing.)

Lest you think all I do is write, I would like to demonstrate that I do, in fact, have other talents.

Like...baking cookies!!!

Look! I even made tiny canisters of mutagen!

Why would I make these? Do I even need a reason for that? Because COOKIES! Because NINJAS! Because COOKIE NINJAS! I really wish I could say that I baked these for some kid's birthday party, but no; I made these for my husband and me.

Yeah, I know.  This post has less than zero to do with writing. But come on. They're Teenage Mutant Ninja Cookies! And in all fairness, Totally Random Tuesdays are totally random.

I hope that all of my readers are having an awesome week so far! See you tomorrow for Word-Craft Wednesday!

Besides writing, what is your favorite activity? Share any thoughts in the comments.

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Just Write

Image courtesy of Graur Codrin at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Ugh.

Dear readers, I realize did not post yesterday or last Friday, and I apologize for that.  I have been under a huge amount of stress, which NaNo has compounded. I've been struggling to keep up with the word count--as of this moment I am only at 28,274 by the Microsoft Word word count algorithm, which has been consistently lower than the NaNo word count algorithm. Par for today is 30,000.

So, I'm not drowning, but I'm swallowing a lot more water than I'd like to be.

I honestly wish I had some good, elegant writing advice today, because I need it.  The reset button I blogged about last week has become more like a snooze button on my alarm clock--I guess you can overdo anything.

But I do have some brutal, unappealing advice:

Write!

You can preface or follow that with an expletive if you are so inclined. The expletive helps if you're really angry or frustrated.  Technically, expletives don't have to be vulgar words, so go ahead even if you're not the swearing type.  An expletive is just something you say instead of something else; e.g., screaming "BLANK!" when you've stubbed your toe, instead of saying, "Ow. I have injured my toe and am in considerable pain." That's right. "Darn," "heck," "phooey," "shoot," "son of a biscuit," and other variations thereof are still expletives.

My preference throughout this has been "Write; just flipping write."

Regardless how you phrase it, it's times like these you just push through, like that time you had an essay that was due the next day at school and you started the night before.  You manage to get it done, because not finishing it is not an option.

Adopting this attitude can be good even when you are not doing NaNo--you have to be flipping determined that your work will be finished.  It won't be finished if you don't keep working on it.  So even if all you do is sit down and write one sentence, you have written.

Writing is what matters.

One sentence a day might take you a while to finish your book, but what if it was one sentence every waking hour?  That's approximately sixteen sentences, right?  This sentence right here is the twenty-sixth sentence in this blog post (if I counted right, and you count sentence fragments as sentences, too).

In two days, you would have a respectable amount of writing--and certainly more than you would have before.  If my counting is accurate, this whole blog post (excluding the invitation to subscribe at the bottom) is 36 sentences.  At a rate of one sentence per waking hour, this would have taken me two days. Imagine what that would amount to over the course of a year.  Writing is always one sentence at a time--so just focus on finishing that one sentence.  Finish one more.  But only focus on the one at a time, or you'll drive yourself batty.

Just write.

Even if you swallow a lot of water on the way, all that matters is that you get to the other side of the swimming pool.

Share any thoughts in the comments. 

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Totally Random Tuesdays: NaNoWriMo!

Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo.org)

For those who are not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month.  The idea is simple: you write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. If you meet the goal, then you win! You can check out all the details at http://nanowrimo.org. If you are so inclined, you can still sign up before November 1^st to get in on the novel-writing action!

While my sister-in-law and one of my friends have participated in NaNoWriMo, this is my first year.  I’m going to be writing a novel which is the third part of a potential series.  It’s actually kind of funny; when I started this novel, Charybda, in 2011, I planned for it to be a standalone novel.  Now, it’s looking like it’s going to be two or three books.  I really don’t want to split it, but it’s getting to be so long that I don’t think it will work as a single book.  So, I’ve decided (for now) to split it in three; however, I won’t know for sure whether it will be two or three books until I have it all written out.

Since I have approximately two-thirds of the full story arc written, but I only have the final one-third of it in outline format, I’ve decided to make the that last third of the story arc its own novel, entitled Nivin. Of course, Nivin is just a working title for it.

This is the novel I will be writing during NaNoWriMo.  Nivin, a blind young woman from a different world, must use questionable powers that she does not understand to save the nation of Libertas from destruction.

Here’s the teaser I imagine might be written on the back cover:

The nation of Libertas has just discovered its history is a lie.  The defenders of Council City have defeated Scyllorin’s preliminary attack, but the evil king’s resources are nearly limitless.  All of Libertas has only one hope going forward: the stranger Nivin, a blind young woman whose powers won them their victory at Council City.  Nivin insists that her powers, which she does not fully understand, are evil and should not be used again.  Nevertheless, the Council insists she leave on a quest to destroy Scyllorin and Scylla, his dragon bride.  Reluctantly, she sets out with three companions: Brand, a young, optimistic champion of the Freemen; former champion Ordnance, a man plagued by his past choices; and the giant Anek, Nivin’s friend who dates back to their days as fugitives together.  When Nivin learns the dark secret behind her abilities, she must face the age-old dilemma: do the ends truly justify the means?

I am really excited to finally finish the last bit of this story arc!  I hope that I can fit all of my plot points into 50,000 words!  As you can imagine, writing 1,700 words per day will be a huge demand on my time! That equates to about 6 or 7 pages (double spaced) per day.

As a result…well, blogging might be a bit tough for me during the month of November.  I’ll still try to get up my four posts a week, but they might be significantly shorter than usual. On the plus side, I’ll keep you all posted on how my NaNoWriMo progress is going! (That’s a plus side, right?) I also hope that if I miss a day, you’ll find it in your hearts to forgive me. 

Write on!

Do you think you’ll participate in NaNoWriMo? Do you know anyone who is? Share any thoughts in the comments.

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New Feature: Totally Random Tuesdays!

I am introducing a new feature here on The Lonely Young Writer. "Totally Random Tuesdays" will be, as the name might suggest, totally random and on Tuesdays.

This isn't an every Tuesday thing.  It's a random, whatever-Tuesday-I feel-like-posting-something thing.

Not only is the timing random, the topic will be too.  Will it be pictures of my cats?  Raising awareness for a certain cause?  A vlog?  More stuff about writing? Who knows?

All you know is that it's going to be on Tuesday, and it will be totally random.

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For today's TRT, I would like to bring your awareness to a specific cause and challenge you with a writing exercise.

Image courtesy of www.mofas.org

 It's the last day of September, and September is Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Awareness Month.  But FASD isn't something we can ignore the rest of the year.  It's a serious problem in America, and many people still don't even know what it is.  FASD is a birth defect caused by the mother drinking alcohol during pregnancy.  It's the most common birth defect and the most preventable one.  Check out these websites to learn more about this serious social problem.

CDC: Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders

University of Washington: What is FASD?

Minnesota Organization of FAS: FASD FAQ

Now, for your writing challenge, write a very short story (1,000 words or less) from the perspective of a) a person who suffers from FASD or b) the mother (either biological or adoptive) of a child with FASD. If you'd like to, please share what you wrote for the writing challenge in the comments.  Share it with everyone you know. 

It seems strange, but writing is a way to change the world around us.  Books often trigger social change.  The working and sanitary conditions in meat packing plants improved after Upton Sinclair pointed out how bad the conditions were in his book The Jungle.  Words are powerful things.  With words as well as actions, we can fight the problem of FASD. We can change the world.

Please help me spread awareness by sharing this blog post on your favorite social network.  If you want, you can also check out and share the post I did on this topic over at Lamps and Mirrors, my other blog: An Exercise in Speculation

Give a shout-out of support to those who face the problem of FASD or struggle with addiction in the comments.

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