Rachel Inch's Blog

April has begun and its hard to believe that Spring is on its way. One of the things I always look forward to in April is Camp NaNoWriMo and I am once again participating. I am super excited to be starting a fresh novel this year for Camp. This is especially exciting because this was the year of finishing old novels, and yet I wasn’t in the position to pick up any of my older novels to write this month.

I didn’t have enough time last month to reread/edit the beginning of my next project on “The Big 5”, and so a fantastic writer from Wriye suggested that this be my reward novel for finishing two novels off “The Big 5”! She did not have to twist my rubber arm to take this suggestion, I jumped on the chance to start a novel in a genre I’d been thinking about for a while!

The Genre in question is an “RPG Lit” and as a gamer, I am anxious to try my hand at it. I honestly didn’t even know it was its own genre until I looked into it. I was first introduced to the concept through a webcomic called Mystic Revolutions (which sadly is no longer updating). It was a fantastic webcomic with wonderful characters and cool gear, but overall I loved the fresh idea of all the action taking place within a game! It was something I wanted to try for years!

So, now I was committed to writing my very own RPG Lit and the question remained, which game would I emulate? It didn’t take very long to decide that I wanted the game that my novel would take place in to be at least similar to my favourite game, Ark: Survival Evolved. (Because dinosaurs!!!) I spent half of March designing what my game world would be like, and what the virtual reality aspect would comprise of. I planned out my vague plot, created some colourful characters, which I found were often present in each Ark-RPG server I’d played on (and one modeled after my sister’s unique play style) and was ready to get writing!

Then April came and I dove into my novel. It’s called “Untamed”, and if nothing else, its going to be a blast to write!

I hope everyone else is as excited about their Camp projects as I am!

I was introduced to NaNoWriMo in 2011. For those of you who don’t know what that is, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. It takes place each November and is a challenge to write a 50k novel within a month. The project I choose for this very first NaNoWriMo was “Lightning“. It was based on a dream that I’d had in University which I had recorded in hopes of returning to it. NaNoWriMo gave me the perfect opportunity to pull out that idea and really give it the attention it deserved.

Unfortunately, I failed that first NaNoWriMo and only managed to write 38k. It was disappointing to fail, but still, 38k is not bad for one month! So now I had this novel started, and I continued to add a bit to it here and there, but I never really got it finished. So on the shelf it sat, about 75% complete and begging for those final scenes. Other projects caught my attention and off I ran, creating my Chaotic Galaxies Series and exploring other Horror projects.

In 2019, I sat down to write my yearly goals for WriYe and created “The Big 5“, a list of all those wonderful novels sitting on the shelf which deserved to be finished. There, on the shelf was “Lightning” and I was determined to see it through to the end. So February arrived and my goal was to reread and edit what I had written so far. I was so excited to finally give “Lightning” the attention it longed for!

Editing is not my favourite part of writing, I can assure you. So, those first few days of getting back into the mindset of editing, was not easy. The starting of the novel was familiar and brought me back in with those characters right away. There was a lot of expanding required, which helped me get used to the characters again. In the center of the novel I found myself in scenes that were only hazy memories, which came more clear as I fine tuned them. I created character bios that were sadly lacking, I rounded out some of the characters and added depth to others as I neared the end of editing.

Then, there I was! At the end of what I’d previously written, staring at the cursor which blinked expectantly for new, fresh words to be added.

Those first few words that I added were harder than I expected. I thought that once I hit the point where I was adding new words that they would flow easily. That the ending of the novel would just write itself! But it did not, and I struggled with those first new scenes, surprised by how hard it was. So I took a couple days, toying around with what was to come next. I wrote myself a list of things I knew for sure, like ‘what was really happening’ and ‘what the ending is supposed to be’. After that list, I found myself playing with ‘what needs to happen for that ending to make sense,’ which gave me a whole new list of events. A list of questions came out of my planning next, ‘does this person die?’, ‘How does the main character get that final bit of information needed to conquer her adversary?’.

Out of all these lists, I found the remaining plot! It took a little reorganizing, a little more ‘what if,’ planning, but there it was! Finally, the writing became easier! It felt less like I was lost and wandering; it felt like I was now working towards something! The end was in sight and I was now racing towards it with those glorious, new words!

It was weird to be back in my 201 1 head space. I was surprised by how sparse the novel was (given my tendency to be wordy) and how certain words kept jumping out. (I have no idea why I used ‘stated’ so often) Thankfully, I was also pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t awful! That I wasn’t having to rewrite everything. I’m really glad that I’m taking the time to go back and finish the novel and I really look forward to finally have that ending down on ‘paper’!

I’ll let you know how it turns out!

It has been a while since I’ve been here so bare with me as I dust off my Blog. I thought while I was dusting this thing off, I’d give you an update on where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to!

My Blog tells me that I haven’t visited since April of 2017, which is quite a long time. In this time my life has been mostly overtaken with my new job, which is both wonderful and wonderfully demanding. It is a job like I’ve never had before, with a boss and team that are nothing but absolutely committed to supporting each other! After my last job, where management didn’t seem to feel like they were doing their job if they weren’t tell you what you were doing wrong with yours, it is a breath of fresh air. I feel totally empowered to do my job, and completely valued by my co-workers!

The one downside, I would say, is that during our busy summer months at work, I have less time for writing. That is thankfully offset by a slower off-season where I can once again jump into the awesomeness that is WriYe! (If you are a writer and haven’t checked it out, I highly recommend it! WriYe Forums)

After a hiatus from writing, I got back into the swing of things in October 2018 with a fresh novel. I find that after I haven’t been writing for a long time, a new novel is the best way to find my momentum. In the back of my mind I’m always thinking about the projects that I really should be working on, but as I’ve mentioned before, motivation is a fragile thing and its best to baby it sometimes!

The novel I started in Oct. 2018 is called “Vector” and it’s a Survival Horror. It’s a genre that I’ve wanted to write for a while, but wasn’t really sure which way I wanted to go with it. I had toyed with some RPs on the subject and slowly began to envision the devistated world that I wanted to set my novel in. “Vector” was a great jump into writing again and I am pleased to announce that I stuck with it and completed my first draft in January 2019! This was a wonderful accomplishment because it was the first novel I was able to scratch off “The Big 5.”

“The Big 5” is my list of novels that I have started over the years that I hope to finish this year. With that being said, the chance of me finishing all five are pretty slim but if I don’t set my sights high, I’ll never know what I can accomplish. I would be perfectly happy if I can strike just two off of “The Big 5”

I have lots of plans for this year and I’ll update my blog with more challenges and updates as the year progresses. With any luck, I will be able to update more regularly, so stay tuned!

Also, a big shout out to Keri and Liz, whose Blogs are what inspired me to pick up my own again!

The Big Five

1. Chaotic Galaxies: Into the Mist

Genre: Science Fiction

Summary: The next installment of the Chaotic Galaxies Series. When Hannah left her homeworld of Misturia, she never thought that she would ever go back. She had no idea that a close call with Slavers would send her and her friends fleeing into the Mist that protects her home world. They take refuge on Misturia, a world that only one of her kind could find, but it is not the reunion she expected. Apparently Hannah has returned just in time to save her world from destruction!

2. Lightning

Genre: Horror

Summary: A class trip to a museum turns deadly when the class encounters a sudden and dangerous storm on the way home. They are forced to land at an abandoned resort on the side of the old highway in the mountains, only to find out that what they thought was a stroke of luck, was also the thing the nightmares. The storm refuses to move on, and seems to have a mind of its own. They’ll have to figure out what’s really going on before the lightning claims every last one of them!

3. Antibodies: End Game

Genre: Horror/Zombie

Summary: Becca had always been out for herself, and even more so when the world ended and the dead walked. A chance encounter led to her being taken in by a group which she unwittingly became part of. Now that it seems that she isn’t going to be able to shake her newfound group, she’s starting to look at things different. She decides that its time to find a way that her immunity can benefit others, and not just herself. Even though it goes against everything she once was, she now heads out on a quest to find out if there is anyone left that can use her immunity for the good of mankind. (what’s left of it anyways)

4. Vector

Genre: Survival Horror

Summary: The world has Changed. After a series of horrible mutations and mass deaths, the remaining population are forced to survive in a world now populated with horrific monsters that used to be human.

5. Hidden in Plain Sight

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Summary: On their world those with magic are often hunted by their own kind to acquire their magic. Some of the weaker magic users turn to Anya for protection. She does the only thing she can, open a portal to the modern world in order to hide these magic refugees away from those who would hunt them. All seemed well, and for a couple years these refugees were able to blend in with our world, forgetting the threats of their home. Then Anya recieves a frightened call from her friend. She arrives only to find her friend is dead and her magic stone has been taken. Now Anya must find out who is hunting her people and fears it may be one of the refugees.

I’m going to take a few minutes from carefully crafting wonderfully composed sentences into a wonderfully thought out and exciting novel for Camp NaNoWriMo to compose my answer to the WriYe Blogging Circle Question. I’m not sure if I’ve talked about this already on my blog but for the heck of it, I’m answering it again! The big question of the month is:

Why did you start writing?

     I’m sure there are plenty of answers to such a big question, but my answer if fairly simple and had nothing to do with writing at all. I started writing because I wanted to sleep.

     When I was about seven I had an awful time falling asleep (still do actually) and one night after whining about how tired I was and how I just couldn’t fall asleep, my mother gave me a little bit of advice which has shaped who I am now. My mother suggested that to fall asleep, that I just lie there and tell myself a story and that I would drift off. Desperate for anything to work, I did just that.

     So there I was, crafting myself more and more elaborate stories in order to get to bed. Certainly the next step after creating a story is to find pen and paper and start writing them down! I’m not really sure when this first started happening as I remember the earliest time as being in grade two when I was encouraged in my Extended Enrichment Program to write my stories down. I started simply enough with little silly stories about the kids in my class, which I was then encouraged to share with them!

   It was from those two things that the floodgates opened and writing became who I was! In Grade Seven, I had an unfortunate problem with making friends in a new school which turned into many a lunch hour in front of the library’s computers working on what had become a series about my former classmates. That ballooned into my first attempt at a novel the following year in my first year in high school. That first novel turned into a three part series (as my novels tend to do), and went from there.

    By the time I hit college I considered myself a writer and sought only to perfect my skills! To think, it all stemmed from not being able to sleep when I was seven…

How has your writing improved since you first started?

     Considering I started writing when I was in grade two, the only answer I can possibly give is “In every way!”. It started from simple changes that turned my small couple page stories into longer and longer stories. Those stories changed into a novel where I started to focus on adding descriptions into my walls of speech. Slowly I started to look at being more careful with point of view and tense, as well as being aware of words I was overusing or using wrong. In every stage of my life my writing has evolved in one way, even now I find myself focusing on perfecting my editing as I shape my novels for publication.

     I really don’t think that an author is ever really done improving their writing. Its a life long search to find that one little detail, that one little thing, that will make your writing just that much better!

Editing…

If your anything like me, the very idea fills you with dread. I hear there are others that enjoy this craft of tweaking and perfecting, and I like to call those people Unicorns! (I’m looking at you Erin) Editing is the topic of this month’s Wriye Blogging Circle so I may as well jump right into it.

What’s your plan of attack for editing? Is it a chore for you? Do you enjoy it? What’s the hardest thing for you in the editing process?

My plan of attack when it comes to editing is always to break it into smaller, easier to swallow bites. If I sit down with the purpose of ‘editing my novel’ I usually find other things that just HAVE to be done first and escape as quickly as possible. I find it much easier if I break it into Chapters so when I sit down to edit, I only have to get through this one Chapter. Tomorrow I’ll move onto the next Chapter and so on and so on until I’ve completed the novel. There’s something about this method that helps make the task seem manageable.

I find editing a chore. There’s really no way around it, I just do. I would much rather be creating new material than sitting down and slogging through what I’ve already written. Unfortunately, I also know that its completely necessary and as I’ve matured as an author, I’ve learned to ‘suck it up’ and get it done. I would like to note that the more that I do edit, the better my first drafts become. I often start to see patterns of mistakes and when I’ve corrected the same one over and over in a couple novels, I find myself avoiding that problem in the first place on new projects! This makes editing much easier as I go on as I’ve got cleaner first drafts to work with and can concentrate more on the content mistakes rather than grammar and punctuation.

The hardest thing about the editing process for me is just finding the motivation to sit down and do it. I know I don’t like it, I know its boring compared to writing new stuff, but its got to be done. In the end I know I’m going to make the novel a better novel and that I’m likely going to find tidbits that I can use in later novels that I’d forgotten I’d added. I know I’m going to find little character traits that I’d developed in later novels and can now go back and hint at in my previous novels. Really, I just need to sit down and do it!

What’s the best and/or worst editing advice you have ever received?

My best editing advice I’ve been given (which was really something I read online and I can’t even remember where), was to read it aloud. Sometimes my grammar may not be the best, but I find that when I read my novel aloud during the editing process I can find mistakes that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I know that if I trip over a sentence than something must be wrong with it. I may not know exactly WHAT grammar mistake I’ve made, but I know there’s one in there. A lot of my typos get found this way as well, rather than reading over it too fast to notice.

The more I take my time and do the editing the I need to, the better I get at it. The faster I identify the mistakes and fix them. Its a worthwhile task and its slowly getting less and less painful. (Not painless, of course, but less painful)

I have officially finished my first novel of the year! I’m just talking first drafts complete here, unfortunately I still haven’t gotten the editing done that desperately needs my attention. The novel is called “Undefined” and is probably the most unromantic Romance that has ever been written! (I literally wondered at one point if there was too little gore in the novel…)

Its a pretty great milestone to have passed this early in the year and I’m quite proud of the accomplishment! It would be nice if it were a Chaotic Galaxy novel, but its actually a challenge project for Wriye and one that won’t likely ever be more than a fun experiment. But not to worry, I do have two Chaotic Galaxies novel in the works and many more that need to be edited and published!

I hope this novel is the first of many this year. Actually the first of six if you want to get really specific. That’s my goal for the year, complete six novels by the end of December! There is a challenge being thrown around to finish a novel a month but I decided to decline such a huge challenge because it felt like setting myself up for failure. I know me, I can’t write that much that fast, but I figure that I CAN do six in the year. These novels don’t have to be started this year as well, just finished within the year. This works great for me because I have a few, like “Undefined” that I just finished, that are already sitting at half way there!

There is also a challenge to finish a Trilogy which is perfect, as I’ve got the first novel of a trilogy already in the books with another two planned. This gives me a great push to actually finish those two remaining books and strike those projects off my plate!

It turns out, challenges and goals really work for me and I find myself wondering why I never tried this kind of thing before. Its not like it wasn’t obvious that setting goals would probably turn out to be a good thing, because how could it not? I just figured that I’d be no good at goal setting and that even if I had set a ton of wonderful goals, the chances of following through would be slim. I suppose that’s how the challenges fit in, they’re the vehicle for me to use to be successful at those goals. It doesn’t hurt that I set realistic goals that I’m sure I can accomplish. (Nothing like starting out your goal-setting with a horribly unrealistic goal that you can’t possibly succeed at and therefore sour the entire experience!)

No matter what it was that has pushed me to this milestone, its one that I am proud of. I hope that all you writers out where are finding your own success this year!

January was quite a successful writing month I’m happy to report! After barely writing for an embarrassing year and a half I managed to surpass my humble goal of 20k and wrote 72k! What a way to get back into writing!

I’ve been working on three novels, which is now four as I’m doing the Keeping Warm In February Challenge which turned into a novel a couple years ago. The end of that novel is in sight which will make it my first finished novel of the year! I’m already set up to destroy my February’s goal as I’ve already surpassed that same humble goal of 20k!

So without going into to too much detail, let’s dive into the Wriye Blogging Circle question of the month!

“What does genre mean to you? Do you have a “home” genre? Or are you a genre hopper and are comfortable in just about any one?“

Genre to me is the smallest summary you can give about your novel. Its giving a general rule that your novel followed to give your reader a generalized sense about what you’ve written. If I say I wrote Sci fi the reader is pretty sure that space and technology will likely be used at some point. These days there is a lot of cross between Genres so its likely giving  you the most prevalent aspect of the novel.

I don’t really have a home genre, as I usually say I write in the “All the cool stuff genre”, which to me encompasses Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and basically anything with a supernatural or magical twist. To me this also includes Distopia, which I’ve yet to write myself but really want to. I find it hard to write much in the way of ‘real world’ fiction as we already live in the real world, I want to see the fantastic!

I can move around the genres within my collection of ‘cool stuff’ fairly easily but I’ve recently been challenged to write outside this collection. I’ve managed to write in a few different genres but I’m not sure if I’d actually use the word comfortable about the experience. I mean, I’m working on a Romance (which I will deem a Supernatural Romance because its got a LOT of supernatural aspects to it, almost to the point of clouding out the Romance), but I definitely wouldn’t say that I’m comfortable in that Genre. I would probably say that I’m enjoying the visit, but I’m looking forward to returning home.

These tests of genre have been very interesting to me, I’ve got to say, as its a real test of my skills. I like to go through the exercise of pushing myself to see if I can do something that I’d never have tried had it not been for the challenge. I’d definitely recommend it to others, its a great creativity exercise!

Do you read the same genre you write? Yes or no? If yes, why? And if no, why not?

Yes, definitely! I write about the fantastic because that’s what I’m most interested in, and I read about it for the same reason! There is just so much creativity in “all the cool stuff” and its amazing to see what other writers come up with, and believe me, I’ve met a LOT of very talented writers lately! Besides, all that drama that ‘real world’ novels are about are in the genres I read, its just surrounded by so much more!

Or lack thereof…

    I have been having a wonderful writing month. With the help of the Challenges on the Wriye Forum coupled with the encouragement of so many fine writers, I’ve managed to write 60k already this month. This is an amazing feat given how few words I feel like I’ve been writing for almost a year now. Which makes me consider the fickle thing that is motivation…

    Ever since the end of the year when I realized that I’d somehow managed to capture the fickle thing that is my motivation I have been guarding and babying it like it was a tangible thing. There are certain projects that I SHOULD be working on given my goals of publication this year and then there are projects that I’m just enjoying at the moment. While I know which projects I should be working on, my motivation for said projects is a lot less than say, my zombie novel, Antibodies:Wanted.

    Given the fragile state of my newly found motivation, do I risk losing it by making myself write what I should be writing, or do I follow it where IT wants to go? Do I let it pick which path it wants while I cultivate it into a stronger and stronger motivation? In the back of my mind I can’t help but picture myself guarding this little flame through a wind storm in hopes that I can make it grow large enough that it will sustain me no matter what project I want to work on. When I think of this fragile thing, this motivation which can wane at a moments notice or the appearance of any real life stresses, I can only hope I can grow it into something else. I hope I can grow this tiny thing into ‘habit!’

    Habit feels like a completely different entity all together. It feels like a thing that can weather the storm of pushing through the tough spots on a project I really want to get done. It feels like I don’t have to follow habit’s every whim, working on new projects here and there as long as I keep it fed with what interests it.

    Does anyone else consider their motivation like this? Does anyone in a writing slump sit frowning at their empty document wishing they could capture that motivation, if only for a little while?

Another year has started and another Wriye with its wealth of challenges is underway! I must say that I was incredibly excited this year to participate in Wriye as last year was so much fail that its not even worth mentioning. Not only was I looking forward to accomplishing my writing goals, but I was also excited to reconnect with the Wriye girls! Its great motivation to hear their story ideas, their own goals and just general life chatter!

My goal for January, besides my usual 20k word goal, was to get a head start. I know me, I get excited, I write like crazy… and then life happens. It sucks, but its just the way life goes and I know that when life happens my writing motivation escapes, leaving me staring at a blank page with no desire to do anything. So a head start is pretty much a requirement if I’m to reach my goal and a head start I have! I’m only nine days in and I’m passing the 21k mark with more challenges awaiting me!

I’ve got a number of interesting challenges on the go at the moment and they’re great for keeping up my motivation. After I complete each one I can’t help but think to myself ‘what’s next?’ There is an interesting 31 Original Character Challenge which I scaled back to only 15 for fear of how many new novels that it could create. I’m using this challenge to write up all those bios that are in desperate need of some attention for the two novel series I’m primarily working on. So far so good, I’ve written up four bios and no new stories have generated. Mind you, they have definitely enriched the novels that they came from, adding new dimension and a little more mystery. I’ve got a few other bios in mind that I need to work on, so this is a great challenge for getting me doing what I should have already finished by now!

Another interesting challenge is the One, Two… Trilogy Challenge created by the very talented Keri! She knows just as well as I that writers, especially those in the genres that I like to write, are notorious for making our novels into trilogies. (Totally guilty of this myself) While we often succeed in creating that first novel in our trilogies, we don’t always finish the series. So Keri’s challenge is to actually complete our trilogies (or in the case of a couple of crazy Wriyers with word count goals MUCH higher than my own, complete a trilogy of trilogies) within the year. As it so happens I was just in the middle of my own Trilogy so signing up for this challenge was a no brainer.

I’m incredibly happy with my so far and I can only happen that life’s troubles will stay away from my doorstep long enough for me to get a good head start on the year’s writing!

Hello 2017!

Another year hath gone by and a new year of WriYe has come around. My attempt at WriYe 2016 was dismal to say the least but I’m back in the saddle and stronger than ever!

What’s your Wriye Word Count goal and why did you chose it? What are you going to be focusing on this year? What are you doing differently this year compared to last year?

My word count goal for 2017 is 250,000 words. Its a nice achievable number and I think that if I can write consistently every day, that I can blow this goal out of the water. I really wanted a word count goal that was both high enough to be challenging, but low enough that I can be successful and 250k just felt right for both of those.

I have three things that I want to focus on for this year.

Consistency: Writing every day is a must, even if its just a little bit. I want to get used to writing at the same time each day until it becomes habit to get my words done each morning.
Publication: Of Chaotic Galaxies:Blood, Its been too long since I published my first novel and I’m determined that I WILL get Blood on sale and out there for everyone who’s been waiting for it!
Editing: So much editing to do. I’ve got first drafts for a half dozen Chaotic Galaxies novels just waiting on the shelf to be polished. That doesn’t even include other projects that also need to be dusted off and buffed to a shine!

Its hard to say what I’m going to do differently this year from previous years. I guess the most obvious would be to stick with it. Fight through real life stresses and just take the time to really forget those struggles and concentrate on my writing. I’ve got to learn to make writing a priority and not to be distracted by all the other fun things there are to do.

What are you most excited about for in 2017? Writing wise or not. Let us know!

I’m excited to finally have Chaotic Galaxies: Blood in my hands, and hopefully my Short Story Collection as well. There’s just something about holding your neatly bound, glossy covered, new book smelling novel in your hand with your name neatly printed in the corner. I’m looking forward to that experience again!

I’m also excited about the prospect of having my sister closer to me as she’s possibly moving to a town much closer to mine!!

Here’s hoping I can keep up the excitement for this upcoming writing year that I feel right now. With the help of the WriYe girls on our Chat Group, I’m sure I will.