jenkinsjf

I've decided I'm going to play a game with myself and my writing goals. Anyone who wants to play too can of course. It's mostly just a way to stay motivated. Heck, I may even make some shiny graphics and rewards for anyone who does it and is honest about what they've completed.

Basically, you pick a tier. The tier has goals. Accomplish the goal? you get your prize! Tada!

TIERS

NINJA: The way of the ninja is fast and diligent. This path is filled with a lot of discipline. Use this one if you need something to keep you moving every day.

BARD: The bard is poetic. This path is for those who need prompts, words, pictures, inspiration, to get the words floating freely.

WARRIOR: The warrior charges in head first. The path of the warrior is for those who need a goal to strive for and imagine until the end. They are the tank.

DEITY: The deity is the strongest of all beings. This path is for those who are a glutton for punishment and need a tough goal to push them forward.

NINJA:

Level 1: 200 words, 5 days in a row.
Level 2: 200 words, 7 days in a row.
Level 3: 500 words, 5 days in a row.
Level 4: 500 words, 7 days in a row.
Level 5: 250 words, 10 days in a row.
Level 6: 250 words, 14 days in a row.
Level 7: 300 words, 14 days in a row.
Level 8: 300 words, 21 days in a row.
Level 9: 350 words, 21 days in a row.
Level 10: 500 words, 14 days in a row.

BARD: Write a scene involving the prompts for the level.

Level 1: Snow, Star, Song, Silver, Sleep.
Level 2: Princess, Powers, Dream, Sugar, Roses.
Level 3: Room, Time, Closet, Roof, Tingle, Toes, Promise.
Level 4: Envy, Enviroment, Walk, Ugly, Igloo, Open, Love.
Level 5: Religion, Queen, Birds, Freedom, Yes, Male, Kiss, Kind.
Level 6: Fish, Artist, Dancing, Forbidden, Lust, Baby, Justice, Jewel.
Level 7: Drink, Food, Feast, Holiday, Sunshine, Barrier, Number, Show, Peace.
Level 8: War, Knee, Flower, Rainbow, Darkness, Dread, Fear, Depressed, Grief.
Level 9: Lips, Gentle, Sexy, Heat, Fierce, Ferocious, Devastated, Groan, Present, Hate.
Level 10: Destroy, Rage, Lightening, Black, Money, Slave, Servant, Travel, Gun, Go, Flee.

WARRIOR: All totals are accumulative. Every 10k, you go up a level.

Level 1: 10,000
Level 2: 20,000
Level 3: 30,000
Level 4: 40,000
Level 5: 50,000
Level 6: 60,000
Level 7: 70,000
Level 8: 80,000
Level 9: 90,000
Level 10: 100,000


DEITY: These are not accumulative goals. When goal is hit, you must begin again at 0.

Level 1: 10,000 in 10 days or less.
Level 2: 20,000 in 20 days or less.
Level 3: 30,000 in 30 days or less.
Level 4: 40,000 in 40 days or less.
Level 5: 50,000 in 50 days or less.
Level 6: 60,000 in 60 days or less.
Level 7: 70,000 in 70 days or less.
Level 8: 80,000 in 80 days or less.
Level 9: 90,000 in 90 days or less.
Level 10: 100,000 in 100 days or less.


GOOD LUCK!

Closing at Daily's is a little crazy sometimes. A lot of weird people come in during the evening shift, and during the weekdays we close at 10:00 p.m. and Friday and Saturday we close at midnight. Sunday's are called 'the short day' because we're only open until 7:00 p.m. The last time I was there in the evening there was a couple making out in the back, and a man having a very heated conversation with his coffee mug. I decided to go elsewhere to do my homework after that, and only came to the shop when there was a good band playing on the weekends.

( continued.... )

I'm going to try and keep this brief because I've got lots of things to organize today (mostly my little man).

Let me start by saying that it is official! I am being published by Astraea Press! They are an e-publisher, so my book will be available online and through print on-demand. This is very exciting news obviously. I want to thank everyone who helped encourage me and who helped with the beta process. My journal here is going to be going through a bit of a makeover. Mostly because I'm just not happy with how sloppy it is with its organization.

Part of that makeover is that I'm going to friends only a lot of my content here. I'm still going to be posting here, news, updates, and stories! I have a method to my madness, so if you don't understand it that's fine, however those of you who have been forever faithful to me and my work have the first privilege of getting on my all access filter. Please comment if you want to be on it. Some of you get automatic pass in, but there are some people I don't know for sure if they want that kind of access.

I'm opening up a wordpress account. I've got lots of little projects to work on before the end of the week. I'll be keeping you updated, but this is all just a wonderful experience all around.

More of the Christmas Special should hopefully be up before I go into work. :)

Happy Holidays and thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

"Think of the Ushi". This is something my co-worker always used to say to me, and it kind of became an inside joke. The Ushi, you see, is my cat, and she's quite a fluffball. That's not what I wanted to write about though. Today I am calling out to my writing/reading friends to offer a networking option for all of your amazing work. The TotU Press ring.

The purpose of this ring is to create a network of support and encouragement amongst author's who self-publish on the web for free - whether it be articles or stories. Ideally, I want to get a website up and running for this, but at the moment we'll just have to stick with my twitter newspaper and old fashioned frequent linking on LJ. Everything on the TotU ring is owned by the author publishing the content. The ring is about easy promotion, networking, and making friends.

You can check out my rather sad looking newspaper that I've created online: http://paper.li/jfjenkinstweets/totupress.

Do you see how sad it is? Do you see how it would be much happier if you contributed? Just something to think about. Even if you don't have a new chapter of your story up right away, we can link to old things to make it look snazzy and fill it with lots of juicy content! It might be a slow process to start, but with your help it could become something really awesome.

Those who are interested in contributing to this webring, feel free to comment here with your information (website/twittername/whatever I need to look at for promoting stuff) or send me a DM on twitter. I will even screen comments so you don't need to worry about some spam bot finding you.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to this proposal. I'm off to return to my writing!

Congrats to kuroilotus and ibonekoen for being winners of my contest. I'll be PMing you a list of books in about a week or two. You'll be receiving your prize sometime shortly after the holiday most likely.

Thanks to everyone who did participate. I'll no doubt be doing another one sometime in the not so distant future!

How many of you survived NaNoWriMo? Rock on for everyone who participated. Even if you didn't write the 50k, good on you for trying. It's hard to write that much isn't it? It's hard to stay motivated too! Now it's time to rest. I'm personally doing so by getting back to my reading list, my gaming list, and napping whenever I have the opportunity.

I'm also taking time to get ready for next year. The end of the year and planning goals for the next is a weird sort of highlight for me. Yes, I know that it's still the beginning of December, but I really want to make these goals now (and possibly get a head start on them). I decided I would share, since a good number of them have to do with my work. Check back and watch me cross them off!

1) Read through my Book List (Will share this after Christmas!)
2) Get through half of the games on my shelf. (I will also share this list after Christmas!)
3) Obligatory weight loss goal for the year.
4) Finish Vala 2,
5) Finish Dragons: Touched.
6) Stop neglecting B. o. B. and post a chapter of that every month until it's finished.
7) Post a chapter of Coffee Talk every month until it is finished.
8) Query, query, and don't give up until I have an agent.
9) Mail out contest prizes to the winners (but hey, you kind of need to enter people!).
10) Start on personal project sequel.
11) Start on another new project for the website?
12) Find a good way to consolidate my archive post to make it easier to read until I can get a real official website.
13) Start the TotU Publishing Ring (comment or message me for details).

Yeah, I'm going to have a busy writing year. To finish up 2010 I only have two more goals. I need to finish writing on a personal project of mine, and then write up this year's Christmas special. I am quite proud of myself and everything I have accomplished this year. Expect another chapter to come up in a few minutes actually.

Happy December everyone!

My National Novel Writing Month journey has officially come to an end. I finished this past Monday actually, and I haven't touched my work in progress since. This is okay of course because I did a lot of writing in a short amount of time. I'm feeling a little tapped. I'm disappointed in myself though because I ended up plot hopping. I'm spending my time planning for the future and playing a lot of Final Fantasy 6 any chance I can. I usually get about an hour and a half in a day. I'm hoping for this trend to continue. It's always good to take a break so long as you don't forget about what you're doing.

So what's next? I'm going to be putting up some new fiction soon. I'm thinking sometime within he next week or so. I just have to do my minor edit phase. Most of my fiction that goes up on the website is just mildly editted. It isn't polished. I'm well aware of this. I know though that if I take the time to make it absolutely perfect, it will never be done because I'm that kind of a perfectionist. My goal is to get the story out as best as I can. Anyway, new story!

This is a highly personal project, but I can't resist putting it up to share. I'm also working on my project that I am going to query and another Christmas special. I had every intent of doing one for Halloween, but I couldn't think of anything that really fit with the theme. I don't tend to write scary things, and it just wasn't time. Next year I hope!

After this personal project, I'm going to be posting some of the Vala sequel up, the Dragons Saga sequel, and much, much more!

Because Nano sucked up my personal time, I'm going to extend my contest through January. It'll also give me more time to get funding together for shipping because due to circumstances? I haven't been able to save for that very well. I've got a couple of entries so far! You can win some awesome books! So I'm going to make this simple.

Comment this entry for an in! If you're not a friend to this journal yet? Go ahead and add me and that'll get you another entry! It's easy!

I think that's everything. :)

National Novel Writing Month is back again. Just like every November since 2004, I will be participating! I always look at this time as a holiday of sorts. It's kind of my kick off holiday for all of the other holidays. Now, a lot of people have a love/hate relationship with NaNo. I am one of them. This is possibly one of the most frustrating challenges I've ever encountered because it stretches my brain in ways that it's never been stretched before. Some of my readers do NaNo, and others have never done it before but want to give it a try, and others find it just as frustrating at I do sometimes. This post is going to be all about NaNo and what little advice I can give, as well as an introduction to my flailing.

What IS NaNoWriMo Anyway?

National Novel Writing Month is basically sitting down for the whole month of November and writing a 50,000 word book. That's right, an entire book in 30 days (or less, some people can do it in less). That's it. You don't really get much in terms of a prize for completing. You get a certificate that you can print out, and sometimes you can get a free proof copy of your book from a vanity press. The real reward is saying that you've done it. Most people shoot for the goal of writing 1667 words a day to try and not overwhelm themselves. Others will race their peers that they meet through the various support groups out their for the event. Over all? It's a good writing time.

What NaNoWriMo ISN'T though....

National Novel Writing Month is NOT your polished draft. It is not going to be the book that you're going to send off to try and publish as soon as it's finished. This is the one big thing that will hang up your NaNo journey.

How to Survive for 50k

Keep in mind, my way is not the only way and everyone's writing journey is different. All I can offer is what I've learned over the years.

1) Plan for breaks. A lot of people think that they'll just sit and write non-stop and not do anything but write for the entire time and then after a day they're wiped out creatively.

2) Don't get too far ahead of yourself. Basically don't over plot the story to death. If there's no room for wiggling, the story won't stay fresh in your mind, the excitement is going to fade, and eventually it'll just feel boring. But....

3) Don't under plot because you'll find yourself flailing because you're lost and nothing is making sense. Some people outline, some people create a rough skeleton, some make word clouds, it's all up to you and what you're feeling. From experience though, the years where I at least have my rough skeleton as opposed to going in with absolutely nothing? Have gone a lot better.

My first NaNo I went in with nothing. I had no idea what I was doing. I won because I hopped around that plot and by the end of the whole thing, I had, well, basically three different stories in one and a lot of uncomprehendable fluff.

The year that I overplotted my NaNo I got through my entire story...in 35k words, and I ran out of things to do, so I started working on the 'sequel'. I found myself rushing through scenes just to finish them so I could keep moving forward and there was absolutely no emotion in it.

My most successful NaNo was the year that I wrote my rough draft for Vala: Agendas. It was roughly 60k, and had scenes from the future that weren't included and a lot of other things that didn't make it into the final draft, but it was the most fun and easiest to get through. I had a concept, I had a direction, and I had my wiggle room. There were lots of mysteries still for me to uncover.

4) Don't take your book too seriously. If you sit and try to make it perfect, or worry about if it's good, you'll never make it to 50k. I go in with the mindset: Yes, this is probably going to suck. A lot. And you know what? I'm okay with that! What does this mindset do? It saves you on a lot of time that you'd otherwise be spending editting and agonizing over whether or not it'll be sellable or if people 'get' it. After reading books by professional authors ("On Writing" by Stephen King, and "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamont to name a couple of favorites) most talk about how the first draft is the crap draft anyway. Just get the idea out. You can fix it later. Besides, you wanna know what else I've found?

5) It usually doesn't suck as badly as you think it does. You're your own worst critic. It's not going to be a perfect book by any means, but it's probably way more awesome than you think it is so RELAX AND ENJOY YOUR STORY!!!!! Yes, I did have to put that in all caps. NaNo is about loving your story, loving the words, and making them fun.

6) Have fun. Play around and experiment with your ideas. NaNo is a time of self discovery. NaNo is a time to give yourself a goal and work with deadlines. It's an exercise in self discipline.

7) Don't freak out if you fall behind. If you fall behind? Don't worry about it. It happens to everyone.

8) If you fall behind, don't think you have to do double to catch up. It's a lot less daunting to alter your daily word goal than to be like: OMG I HAVE TO MAKE UP ALL THOSE WORDS I LOST YESTERDAY TODAY AHHHHHHHH! Do the new math. Take your current word count that you have left and divide it by however many days you have left. Add a few words on if you wanna get ahead/catch up faster, but your brain and sanity might just thank you for it later. If you can handle the doubling of the words? Cool, but I've found this to be a lot more chill.

9) Plan for breaks. Did I say this already? I think so. It's that important.

10) Rewards are great. But only reward yourself if you've earned it.

11) If you need to, make a calendar. Here's mine!



You can click for a larger image. This is just a system that works for me. I've got days where I can catch up if I'm behind, or just focus only on writing and get ahead. I have days where I'm take a break, where I remember to rest, and days to just plain old freak out.

12) Don't let others progress discourage you. So what if your friend is at 10k and you're only at 1k after an hour of writing. That does not make them better than you. The race is between yourself.

13) Find a group of people to encourage and support you and not let you slack off.

14) Write in different locations. Sitting in the same spot might make you feel stale after a while. Find a write-in in your area on the official website!

15) Stay focused. If you have to say no to going out and playing, or make yourself write? Then you're just going to have to do it. Writing isn't something that just flows out naturally all the time. That's why it's a job, a career, it's WORK. Yeah, it's a fun kind of work for most people, but it's still work. You still have to make it happen sometimes.

16) If you get stuck? Push through it, and just keep going. Eventually the excitement will wear off and you'll be in the slump, the part where you feel tired and your muse is tired too. Eventually you'll get back to your stride, or you'll find the thing that's causing you to hang up.


I'm sure I could keep going, and maybe I'll add to this list. Hey, you can add to the list too! All you veterans!

I'll probably blog some more here about my NaNo journey over the month, but if you want to follow my story more thoroughly, go ahead and add: jfjenkinsnano. It's friends only so leave a comment.

Oh and my contest is still on like Donkey Kong. See this post for details.

Contest Update

Dark Prince - Christine Feehan (Supernatural Romance)
City of Bones - Cassandra Claire (YA)
Goddess of the Night - Lynne Ewing (YA, HARDCOVER!)
Tricksters Choice - Tamora Pierce (YA)
A Salty Piece of Land - Jimmy Buffet (General Fiction)
Shadow Game - Christine Feehan (Supernatural Romance)
Eyes Like Stars - Lisa Mantchev (YA)
Rogue Angel: The Spirit Banner - Alex Archer (Sci-fi)
The Dragon Quartet - Marjorie B. Kellogg (fantasy)
Learning to Sing - Clay Aiken (Memoir, HARDCOVER!)
Gramercy Park - Paula Cohen (General Fiction, HARDCOVER!)
Bones of Faerie - Janni Lee Simner (YA, HARDCOVER!)
Based on Availability - Alix Strauss (general fiction)
The Map of True Places - Brunonia Barry (general fiction)


That's my new list of books that I'm giving away in this contest. It's still subject to change, and I'm going to spice things up a little by putting them into groups. You know, prize packs! Fairytales, romance, travel, adventure. If you win a pack? You'll be getting 2-4 books for free!

Entering:

- Add me on twitter.
- Add me on LJ!
- Leave a comment!
- Write a review.

There are lots of ways to enter and win!

Working Hard!

I'm just keeping you all in the loop here on what's going on. I'm still working on all of your favorite stories and working on creating new ones that I hope you love just as much! Ideally I wanted to have some specials written for Halloween, but I've unfortunately fallen behind on my other projects so that might not be happening. I have to go over my list again though. Keep your eyes peeled, I might still throw something together.

It's nearly two weeks until NaNoWriMo though, and if you haven't joined for this writing holiday and still want to? You're more than welcome to sign up at www.nanowrimo.org! It's a free and fun time!

If you wanna watch my progress, you can go ahead and do so at jfjenkinsnano. It is friends only though.

Thanks for all of the support during the readathon!

Finally, go and check out my friend's work at:

kay_herrmann

Anyone else want a shout out or to affiliate? Go ahead and leave me a comment and I will have no problems shamelessly plugging your work!

Until next time!

So I haven't been able to read as much as I'd like. I did finish my first book, I'm working on number two, and number two will go a lot more quickly than one did. I could even squeeze in three before the night is over! I'm determined, and I think I'm going to read tomorrow to make up for the lost hours that I missed out on and will be missing out on when I sleep. We'll see.

I'm on to reading Rogue Angle: The Spirit Banner, and I'm already able to tell that this book is going to be more amusing than it's supposed to be. Cliche' over the top descriptions, and Mary Sueing abound!

That's me checking in. Thank you my cheerleaders for the support! It really made me smile. :) I will reply to comments when I'm done reading. :D