I MADE 50K

I can't believe it but I hit the 50k mark. Yeah, it's brainspew, I know. But I have 50k words down and that's a great feeling. I still have a lot more to go and I hope I don't loose any momentum.
I'm really excited about working on my next book idea so hopefully that will keep me motivated to properly finish the first. I don't want to be that person waiting while trying to sell my first book and not working on the next. I'm determined to make this dream a reality.

Okay, enough sappy stuff. I'm happy to see that so many of you hit your goal - great job!

On an unrelated note, I learned today that there is a Gerard Butler convention in Scotland in January. That's so awesome! I guess there's one in Colorado next year. Pretty neato that there are so many fans of his out there. When I began adoring him years ago I couldn't find another fan for the life of me, but thanks to great casting and Internet improvements, fans are being connected everywhere!

I made a Web site - woohoo!

I've caught up with technology, well sort of. I used a cheaters tool (a site building program) to build the damn thing, but it worked. I used to know HTML, but I don't have the energy to give it a try now.
I keep reading that writers should have a Web site, even if they aren't published. So I thought I'd give it a go. I've been doing okay with the livejournal thing so this is a natural progression. I just need to find some better photos...

I know that the color pink probably makes many of you sick and seems odd for a paranormal romance writer, but I just can't help it. When I see the color pink I am instantly happy. I don't know why. I found a 6 foot PINK Christmas tree (pre-lit) at Meier and Frank. I'm so tempted to buy it but it costs too much. But a pink tree for a pink fanatic? How can you go wrong?

As far as writing progression goes, I'm so close to hitting the 50,000 mark for NaNoWriMo. I can taste it! About a third of me feels great that I typed so many words and they are in a quasi-logical order. But then there's another third that is uneasy about the fact that I'm just passed the halfway point because I'm writing a single title (80-100k). And the other third of me is absolutely dreading the revisions. Right now my manuscript feels like brain spew and I know I'm going to have to go back and make sure that the story lines up, there's enough characterization, foreshadowing appears, etc. But I know I'll be the better for it once it's done.

I also had a moment of inspiration for my next book. It will be a contemporary. I figured that would be wise, in a career sense, in case the paranormal market falls out before I'm finished with my MS, I can try and sell a contemporary.

Okay, back to writing. Stop distracting me journal! :-)

Oh yeah, the site is www.lisapulliam.com (creative, eh?)

Oops

I kind of forgot about my live journal for a few days. I was reading a friend's blog and realized that I have my own journal. Silly me :-) I do have a good excuse though - NaNoWriMo of course!
So I'm at about 18,000 words. Behind by about 10,000 as of today. Hopefully I'll be caught up by the end of the weekend.I had my plot die on me a couple of days ago. I had written the beginning and was approaching the middle when I got frustrated on where to go next. So I wrote the ending. Then I realized that there wasn't any, let alone enough, tension and conflict between the hero and heroine. So guess what I did? I reached out to my fellow WriMo's on the boards of course! I posted an extremely long summary of my story and what I was looking for. So far I've gotten some great ideas and I've taken one and adapted it for my story. Now I feel recharged and it gave me a couple of conflict events that I can put in my story. One where the hero gets upset at the heroine, then they make up. Then the heroine gets upset at the hero, then they make up. Happy days are here again. But now I have to go back and fix and rewrite some stuff. I did the strikethrough feature in Word on that stuff so I knew not to read it, but I kept it for word count purposes. Sneaky sneaky.

And I've decided to go to the Romantic Times conference for sure. It would be too valuable to pass up. I just need to find 3 roommates so my room will be cheap :-) If I can reach that goal, the hotel cost for 6 nights would only be about $270 per person - is that enough to convince you? I have good hygeine, I don't snore and I generally keep to myself so I'd make a good roommate. :-)

Take care all and I hope your NaNo's are going well.

So far, so good

I'm a slack-ass when it comes to this journal thing. I didn't realize it's been five days since posting. Oh well, I've been busy with NaNo so I have an excuse.

The writing has been going well so far. As of right now, I have 7,266 words. Pure crap, but at least it's written. I keep telling myself that I can change it later but that sounds so daunting! It's going to be a total rewrite because my brainspew is exactly that, spew, upchuck, barf. But, once again, at least it's out of my brain and on paper.

I've been pretty much going in chronological order. But I had an idea for some dialogue at the end so I wrote that, and I keep going back to stuff I've written to add things in that I think about later.

I am happy that I spent so much time thinking, planning and plotting. I would have ripped my hair out by now. But I also see why people like to see what shows up on the screen when we type blindly. I've been having a combination of both.

For example, I knew that my hero and heroine would "officially" meet at the Highlander Ball. She'd be exploring the castle (she's writing a book on castles) and go into a room where she found him snooping in the dark. He's a vampire so he can see well in the dark.

I also knew that the conflict in the story would primarily be the bad guy against the hero and heroine. I had an idea of what the conflict would be, but not much more than that. I couldn't plot how she would find out about and plant little seeds of doubt and stuff.

But low and behold as I'm typing the scene after the hero and heroine meet and she goes back to the ball to tell her best friend, who is snogging with a waiter at the party, and began typing an on the fly idea. After the girls left, the waiter goes to report to the owner of the castle and party-thrower (the bad guy) about the girls. He reports that the girls met the hero and then we learn a bit of backstory and foreshadowing to the climax.

This would probably be more meaningful and make sense if I actually explained the storyline a bit. But maybe that will come another day.

So all in all, I'm happy that I spent time pouring over the plot and I'm also pleasantly surprised by what gets written in the spur of the moment and how it can help advance a story.

Back to writing. If I could only include what I wrote here in my word count I'd be so much closer...

Which convention?

I recently joined the Romance Writers of America. I had planned to go to the national convention in Atlanta next July. Thought it would be a great way to network and learn more about writing, and the meeting with an editor or agent would be rad. Right? Well...

So I remembered that I wanted to check into the Romantic Times convention. Well, I did and it's in Daytona Beach! The reason this is significant is because I used to work at Disney World and I've been DYING to go back there. Daytona Beach is only one hour from Orlando and one hour from St. Augustine, the other place I really want to visit again. The problem is that it costs so much. I don't know anyone to go with so I may end up looking for roomies. I'd really like to spend a couple of extra days and rent a car to go to Orlando and St. Augustine but why does it have to cost so much! Argh!!! Registration is like $450, airfare probably $300, $119/night for a single room plus the costs for a rental car and a few extra days. But I do have free passes to Disneyworld :-)

I'm just going to pout for a while...I can't write right now because I'm thinking about the possibility of visitng Epcot...