Writing / Research Tip Tuesday

Another Tuesday, another great tip. This one from frequent reader and commenter VR Barkowski. Make sure to stop by and visit her blog. She posted another great research tip there yesterday that you might not want to miss!

"The Seventh Sanctum website is crammed with all kinds of random generators plots, characters, names, ideas. It's also a whole lot of fun. I won't mention how much time I've wasted with the quick story idea generator. :)"

What a fun website, VR! I've certainly lost some time to it since you sent this tip in. Thanks so much! And hey, everyone, I'm getting low on tips again, so if you have one you want to send in, please do!

agentspotlight(at)gmail(dot)com

MarPrilWriMo or 30k in 30 days

Tyler, Heather, and I are doing a 30k in 30 days challenge. The same rules as NaNoWriMo apply except we're shooting for 30k (at least) and the challenge runs from 3/09/09 (today) to 04/09/09. That's roughly 1k a day, not too bad.

We're all working on first drafts. I think Heather is about a third into hers and Tyler and I will be working on new novels. Gotta get those awful first drafts cranked out somehow.

Want to join in? Please do!

Let us know in the comments, throw a counter up on your blog, and get to writing! We'd love more company.

Side note: I feel way to cheery for a time-change Monday, but then, I didn't stay up late because of it. How's the time change treating you?

First Paragraph Contest

In case you've missed this bit of fun, Nathan Bransford is having a "First Paragraph Challenge" on his blog. The deadline to post a paragraph is this Thursday at 4 pm, Pacific time.

I haven't decided if I'm going to play yet, but I just might.

Fellow writers, I'd love to know if you've entered so I can read your paragraphs!

NaNo: Day the Third

Courtesy of the First Edition gals, I've been awarded the "I Love Your Blog" award. This comes as a total surprise seeing as I've always thought of myself as an awful blogger and I'm really still trying to get my blog going (suggestions are always appreciated.) So I'm feeling extremely complimented and loved at the moment, which is great for the writer's soul (especially during NaNo.) Thanks girls! I promise I'll be passing the award on soon. I just have to stew over my options first - there are so many great blogs!

In other news, it's day three in NaNo-land and I'm still keeping up my word count (check it!) It feels great! I think NaNoWriMo is going to be really good for me, which is the point, I know, but I was/am definitely skeptical. It IS only day three, however, so we'll see how I'm feeling about it next week, and the week after, and well, on November 30th! Yikes!

Also, thanks to Stephanie, I now have an official NaNo word-count widget next to the other one I added yesterday. It only seems to be working intermittently though, so I'm leaving the back up there for now as well. You can find the widgets on the NaNo site under "Fun Stuff" - just add your user number (found at the end of the url of your user page) and you can have one too!

I've had much better luck with the site today by the way. I was able to update my word count and grab the widget, so hopefully things will be speeding up over there for everyone soon.

It's awesome to see how many of my Blogger/writer friends are NaNoing this year. Let's keep encouraging each other as much as possible. It's going to get tougher as the initial excitement wears off. I think we're really going to need each other and that writerly comradery in a week or two!

Keep up the word counts everyone!

World's Best Paid Authors

Last week Forbes put out a list of the ten best paid authors. I'm pretty sure everyone knows who owns that number one spot, but it was interesting to see who the other top dollar authors were.

Curious who the super stars of the writing world are? Well, you can find the article: here.

Check it out!

Casting Call!

It seems to have become a popular pastime for YA writers (and others) to do the following:

A) Cast actors/actresses for their characters

and

B) Create play lists for their novels.

These are fun diversions that even I have dabbled in but I can never find the perfect actor or actress for a character or the perfect song for any given scene, so it's never been an active part of my writing.

However, during a stint of boredom yesterday I started to search for faces that might could work for the two main characters I'm brewing up for my gargoyle fantasy and I'm actually pretty pleased with what I came away with. So, without further ado...

Emily Browning, who is actually a tad old for my character, is the best match I could find for Kara (tentative name) who has a rather unique look. I couldn't find someone with ideal features, naturally, but I think Emily Browning is the closest I can come at the moment.



And this rather attractive young man, Alex Pettyfer, will be representing the main male role presently named Matthew (tentative.) The funny thing here is that he is actually a little too young. So if that actors could just switch their ages...



*Sigh* That was fun. A play list is still yet to be seen but I'll be working on one of those, too.

So tell me, do you cast actors/actresses to help you visualize your characters or do you like to leave it all in your mind? If you do, who are your "chosen ones?" And furthermore, do you create play lists? If so, do you spend the time finding the perfect song for your key scenes or do the songs just generally touch on the emotions but aren't perfectly fit for the scene? Feel free to share any personal thoughts on either!

Who Would You Be?

Wow! I can't believe I haven't posted since May 18th. Shame on me. Sorry for the vanishing act.

Now, something simple to get me back to blogging....

On a parenting forum I frequent we post a lot random questions and polls to placate our boredom. One of the many was as follows and I thought it was a fabulous question to ask my fellow writers and readers!

"If you could live the life of any one fictional character who would it be?"

So, I ask... who would you be?