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Overload Anticipated! Warning! Warning!

Another very rapid update from me - proper posting will resume next week, honest!

Some very quick things you may like to know about my life:

• On Sunday, I fly back to school again.
• On Wednesday, I take the ELAT - English Literature Aptitude Test - as part of my attempt at gaining a place at Oxford university.
• On Thursday, I will have a practice "interview" with a full-time academic in my area as preparation for the occasion of being called to interview at Oxford (if I am).
• By Friday, I need to have sent off two pieces of marked work, also for Oxford's perusal.
• My History coursework needs to be completed by the end of that week.
• My English coursework needs to be drafted after inspection by the teacher, sometime the week after.
• I need to amalgamate more research for the school debating team, and attend the event as a planted nasty-question-giver.

And that's on top of the 50,000 word novel, ten-tonne-mountains of schoolwork, and heck knows what else might creep up on me in the meantime.

This is going to be fun!

However, to prevent you all from getting bored, I'm going to make my NaNoWriMo updates weekly only - every Thursday, I think, is a good day for that. This is both to save you the mind-numbing experience of being deprived of my regular posts, and so I have more entertaining typos and stories to tell you of during each update.

As I accidentally castrated my narrator with a typo last chapter, I sure there'll be no shortage of those.

Enjoy your weekends everyone! I'm off to try and hit 10,000 words before supper time.

~ Charley R

"Nana nana nana nana NaNo!" - Teens Can Write Too! Blog Chain, October 2012

“What are you writing for NaNoWriMo? Briefly explain how this book idea come about. Then write a mock first page for the novel.”

The prospect of NaNoWriMo used to scare the heck out of me, until Miriam Joy bribed me into it in 2010. That year, I scared myself half to death by writing a dark, disturbing, and chronically plot-hole-ridden dystopian novel. The next year heralded the arrival of a set of incomplete short stories, which had evolved out of a world building exercise for what, I thought, would be this year’s NaNovel.

I should know better than to try and plan novels by now. It only ever ends in disaster. And, in this case, that disaster involved so many knots in my brain that I took the coward’s way out and gave up on that idea.

One trip to Paris, acquisition of a street map of London, and several fever dreams worthy of a cracked-out Lord Byron later, the concept of my 2012 NaNoWriMo novel had well and truly bludgeoned all the competition to death and was awaiting its time to strike by filling my imagination with plot bunnies.

The story itself, Ikarus, is nothing like I’ve ever written before. Normally I stick to my forte, that of historical fantasy, but here I’ve decided to plug my nose and vault into a pool of a different ilk; steampunk. Steampunk, for anyone who doesn’t know, is basically mixing futuristic technology to a historical setting by adding bundles of cog-and-wheel-and-aviator-goggles technology to anything and everything you can get your hands on. For this, you can blame my love of meddling with the laws of science, in revenge for all those years spent staring at the classroom wall while my experiments single-handedly defied the laws of nature.

You can blame three days spent learning about 17th Century France amidst the gorgeous capital of France for most of the rest. The politics, the powerplay, the outrageous costumes, the sheer madness of life in general . . . I absolutely had to play with it. The map of London was simply to give me an idea of how to lay out such a city. The setting, the city of Scatterank, is the sort of place that results from 17th Century France crashing into a train full of Victorian London, and being splattered with liberal dollops of something that doesn’t really fit anywhere. You can see why I’d need a map, if I was going to set my characters running amok in it. As for the fever dreams? That’s where the characters came from.

Speaking of the characters, they themselves have become the real driving force for the story itself. Being the inevitable cultural, racial and nonsensical melting pot it is, Scatterank is full of all sorts of interesting people. I pushed a few more boundaries than I usually do in their creation, and they are certainly more complex than many of my past creations. Especially as at least two of them don’t set much store by the laws of gravity.

The narrator, luckily, has yet to demonstrate any more dangerous traits than being rather good at causing small explosions when meddling with things he finds under the stairs. Cue smugglers, conspiracies, feckless mayors and canny deputies, civil unrest, an unpleasant family legacy, wrathful gods, kidnap, murder, magic, irresponsible use of undergarments and . . . well, you can guess where this is going.

What’s more, I haven’t written from a first person perspective in over five years. It’s going to be fun.

Unfortunately, I will be unable to treat you to a supposition of a first page today – not in the least because this post is already far bigger than perhaps it ought to be. The simple fact of the matter is that, whatever I bash out here, the actual opening of the story will be nothing like it. Having a concept of the story is very different to knowing what’s going to happen, and, as the Yiddish proverb goes, “man plans, and God laughs”.

 . . . And yes, that is just a more delicate way of saying “I have no idea what I’m doing”.

For anyone who is still curious about the endeavour, you can hop on over to my NaNoWriMo profile to check out the "official" blurby thing for Ikarus, as well as tons of awesome forums, writerly tips, and other awesome stuff.

Feel free to send me a buddy request too! Let's bork our brains together!

~ Charley R

The rest of the blog chain, and all its fantastical posts, is here:

October 5^th – http://www.lilyjenness.blogspot.com  – Lily’s Notes in the Margins

October 6^th – http://realityisimaginary.blogspot.com – Reality Is Imaginary

October 7^th – http://onelifeglory.blogspot.ca – One Life Story

October 8^th – http://gabrielletheauthoress.wordpress.com – Of a Writerly Sort

October 9^th – http://towerofplot.blogspot.co.uk – The Leaning Tower of Plot

October 10^th – http://insideliamsbrain.wordpress.com – This Page Intentionally Left Blank

October 11^th – http://whatupdates.blogspot.com – What Updates?

October 12^th – http://miriamjoywrites.wordpress.com – Miriam Joy Writes

October 13^th – http://cinderscoria.blogspot.com – Between the Lines

October 14^th – http://weirdalocity.wordpress.com – Inside the Junk Door

October 15^th – http://musingsfromnevillesnavel.wordpress.com – Musings From Neville’s Navel

October 16^th – http://kirstenwrites.wordpress.com – Kirsten Writes!

October 17^th – http://mirrormadeofwords.wordpress.com – A Mirror Made of Words

October 18^th – http://theteenagewriter.wordpress.com – The Teenage Writer

October 19^th – http://platonicpencil.wordpress.com – Platonic Pencil

October 20^th – http://markobrienwrites.blogspot.com – Mark O’Brien Writes

October 21^st – http://amandafoody.blogspot.com – It’s All In My Head

October 22^nd –http://incessantdroningofaboredwriter.wordpress.com – The Incessant Droning of a Bored Writer

October 23^rd – http://teenscanwritetoo.wordpress.com – Teens Can Write, Too! (We will be announcing the topic for next month’s chain)

A Birthday, the Hobbit Way

To the astonishment of her family, her friends, everything that moves (and several things that don't), Charley Robson has survived another trip around the sun. This brings her total of survived rotations up to 17 - her longest record yet!

She doesn't know who's more surprised - herself, or the stool she just tripped over.

And now, reverting from third person before I confuse my split personalities any more than they already are, I give you .... THE OBLIGATORY BIRTHDAY POST!

Words cannot express how long I have been deliberating over what to write here. 

1) Should I give you an update on my life right now? - Nah, I'm not doing anything beyond revising, and I've whined about that enough already.

2) Should I do a special post about birthdays? - Pretty pointless, considering they're nothing special. Everyone has them after all.

3) Should I write a deep and meaningful post all about the trials of growing up, complete with examples from my own life, all topped off with an inspiring but blatantly obvious message? - Tried. Failed. Bought the t-shirt. Twice.

Nah. That's not going to work.

And, after much deliberation, I decided to follow in the small hairy footsteps of the Hobbits, and do a backwards birthday. 

This is my birthday present to all of you.

Enjoy!

- Charley R

Someone Needs a Nappy Change! - Charley R's Guide to Your Characters' Offspring

Fictional kids are just as difficult as real-life ones. Perhaps they're not as prone to screaming fits, stinky nappies and perfecting the art of sleep deprivation, but, just like the bundles of pink squishy matter you meet in the playground, they come with their very own bundles of joys and jubilations. 

And that's just for the characters.

Admittedly, I'm not a great one to talk about children - the closest I've come to parenthood is the occasional  babysitting shift, or working with the younger girls in my boarding house at school. That, and I have no maternal instinct towards children whatsoever. But that's another story.

However, even for authors who are parents themselves, writing about children of any age presents a challenge and - unfortunately - there are good many times when it all goes horribly down the plughole, accompanied by several stinky nappies. 

In my experience, there appear to be three main causes of chronic failure when it comes to children in books:

1 - Children are not portrayed correctly, whether in point of view, or through observation by other characters.

2 - Children are used as vehicles for author wish-fulfillment - e.g. Possessing the potential to be equal to, or surpassing, the magical power / beauty / massive intelligence of the parents.

3 - Children are used solely to create sympathy and pathos - e.g. You show that your grizzled, jaded 987-year-old warlock has a heart by giving him sole guardianship of the sweet innocent little orphan the company picked up on the roadside after the kid's parents were killed. Child may also be killed off for no good reason to jerk at the reader's tear ducts. Note: This never works.

With regards to the first issue, it's probably the hardest to solve. If, like me, you have no children of your own, and / or an aversion to anything under 5 feet tall and incapable of holding a discussion over anything more intelligent than the colour of a rubber duck, then you probably aren't in the best position to produce an accurate representation.

In which case, I have two pieces of advice for you. One is relatively simple - peoplewatch. We all do it, usually when waiting for a bus or train, or sulking over a soggy tuna sandwich in Starbucks, but the trick is to do it productively. Take note of any kids in your vicinity, and ask yourself a few simple questions about them. See how they react to people and events around them, watch for their mood and wonder why they might be acting that way, watch the parents and see how they act around the children. If, as often happens, the child makes eye contact with you, try pulling a few faces. Not meaning to sound like a creeper, but I find it's very easy to work out what sort of child you're looking at by the way they react to me. The braver ones will laugh and hold the look, the shyer ones will look away - or, in some awful cases, start bawling! Though whether that's as worrying as the ones who pull faces back I don't know.

The other solution to the problem of inexperience is, of course, to keep kids out of your story as much as possible. As with any other character, unless they are beneficial and useful to the plot, save yourself the hassle of scraping vomit off the wall and get rid of them. However, if they are essential to your plot, try and work out cunning ways of keeping them as marginal as possible. Here are a few I've used over the years:

- Keep your narrator busy with tasks that will have them out of the house and away from kids.

- If the child in question is very young, it will probably spend a lot of time asleep. Exploit this.

- If (as mine was) your narrator is a clueless male, he may avoid children simply because he has no idea what to do with them. His thoughts shouldn't be too hard to dissimilate from your own.

- If the child is old enough to be off doing things themselves, let them wander! Heck knows my brother and I amused ourselves through much of our youth and left our mother alone ... until we got bored or hungry, of course.

However, on the flip side of the coin, issues two and three are really just the results of poor writing and intention. Obviously, genetics makes it quite likely that a child born to magical parents is likely to have a higher chance of inheriting magic themselves, and kids are - to most, at least - very endearing and empathy-generating things. By all means use this - you'd be daft not to - but please, spare the readers the indignity of a 300-page chapter on how wonderful the fruit of your characters' loins is. Besides, if you're planning on sequels, wouldn't it be more interesting to have a child who didn't turn out like its parents? Nobody is a carbon-clone of the parent and, no matter how much we love the original characters, or how much the author loves the idea of this super-special bundle of genetics that is the combination of every awesome trait they put in the parents, the readers aren't going to believe it, and the child will not turn out well - Mary Sues thrive on advantageous gene combinations.

Besides, everybody loves the screwball hero, don't they? 

Cop-outs on growth and maturing are also very irritating - I might name Renesmee of the Twilight saga as a perpetrator of this, using her uber-speshul vampire blood to age enough in half a book to participate in the action ... and become imprinted with a werewolf who could have been her father. But let's not mention that. Time travel, magic potions, curses and all the rest are out too - your child is a child, and like it or not you cannot entirely excuse its parents (or some unfortunate peasant / wizard / princess who finds the little tyke on their doorstep) from raising it entirely. No matter how fast one wants the child to grow up, there's no Fast Forward button. However much we might wish there was one.

Anyone else been put off the idea of parenthood forever by reading this?

- Charley R

The Versatile Blogging Award - I Feel Famous :)

This overexcitably-written post is dedicated to the guys at Teens Can Write Too! for tagging my blog (albeit under the name of Spook's Scribblings) and putting it under the Versatile Blogging Award! Thank you, you are awesome!

I feel so famous now *grins*

Ze Rules!
Thou shalt leave a muchly-thankful and grovelling link to thine tagger.
Thou shalt then post 5-7 miscelleaneous bits of info about thine self and thine randomness.
Thou shalt tag others as thou wouldst be tagged by.

Anyway, the gist of this is that I now have to write 5-7 random facts about myself, then tag other authors to pass on the epicosity.

Right, here are my random facts!

1- Yesterday was the first time I pronounced "epitome" correctly.
2- I am a sesquipedontist - a person who uses long words.
3- Moths scare the heebie jeebies out of me. Especially when they fly for my face.
4- I am the proud owner of a small red plushie dragon. He lives in my bed, and his name is Llewellyn.
5- I have a fascination with duct tape
6- Anyone who tries to touch my feet will be kicked in the face. You have been warned.
7- I like to play the banjo with the rubber bands in my braces. It doesn't really work, but by heck it's entertaining.

And now to select my victims ...

Elorithryn over at Diary of a Working, Writing Mother

Kirsty over at 'Tis the Way I Tell 'Em

Miriam Joy over at A Farewell to Sanity

And, last but not least, my buddy sazmontgummiebear over at Randomness

Of Plots, Posts and Videos ... and my inability to form coherent alliteration

Hey Peeps! Did you miss me?

Anyway, I'm back to tell you that, after attacking the main layout of the blog, I've gone and raided "The Plots!" page as well. On there, you can now find the synopsis of my NaNovel-to-be, as well as plenty more of my Other Works, which I have tracked down from around the internets. Go on, have a poke, have fun!

Also, I've spent the majority of this morning trying to upload a video I made on my camera, which will give you all a sample of my (bizarre) voice! However, the video doesn't seem to want to play the game. I'll keep trying though, even if I have to put it up on YouTube and link you there, even though that will have the Society of Illiterate and Inconsiderate Comment Posters up in arms because, as my first attempt, it's not very good. Still, more on that later.

In the meantime ... peace out! I'm going to go and get on with all the things I've got to do while I am temporarily free of my mountainous workload.

Ciao!

- Spook

A Multi-Purpose Post!

Well, would you look at that, a dual-purpose post!
Merlin's Underpants, this is exciting!

Anyway, as well as being an obligatory "I'm not dead yet!" post, this little monster also serves a couple more purposes ...

The first, and most important, is to let all you lovely people know that "The Scribblings" tab is finally up and running! Sorry that only two of the works have links - I haven't finished writing Legend yet, and I never posted the NaNovel due to its holey plot, lack of continuity and overall suckiness. However, if you want to know what sick, twisted creation my mind spawned last November, feel free to read the synopsis!
If you want to know more about what's going on in any of the stories (trust me, no question is too odd!) Then leave me a little comment below and I'll happily do a little "Twenty Questions" blog post to answer all your quieries :)

And the next purpose .... there isn't one xD
To make up for it, here's an awesome video I found on YouTube. Who thinks this should be my new theme song?

-Spook