A Point On Accents

"Well I've been thinkin' about this fer a while and I kept noticing writers who would try t' give their characters accents. They'd wanna go fer Irish 'r Pirate 'r Southern 'r Cowboy 'r Rough-City-Type-Thug, so they'd start leavin' off Gs and Os and Ts and tryin' t' git their character t' look like they had 'n accent. But that did'n' work. I j'st couldn't figure out what kinda accent they were s'posed to be goin' for. The character's voice in my head kept switchin' from one accent t' another."
It's just become a tiny peeve of mine lately. If your character has an accent, decide what that accent is, and then listen to people talking in that accent. Write down every word they say. Try to do it phonetically and be honest to what you hear. But please don't overdo it. I' c'n be very 'noyin' when yer tryin' t' read an' the char'cter's not sayin' English words. Bear this in mind; How do your readers talk?
My reader base is primarily Americans. Most of them will read my words in an American accent. Because of the way Americans often talk they will already read 'going over to the store' as 'goin' over t' the store.' If American English is your native language you'll say it quickly enough to slur some words. So there is no need to slur such words in your writing. If your character is Irish and your readers are American, there is no need to say 'goin' t' the store.' In both languages it's granted that Gs and Os and little in-between letters are often left off.
Instead, only change words insofar as it differs from your readers' native accent. So if your readers are primarily British, pick a narrative accent and let your readers assume that all words are said in that accent unless otherwise specified. If your narrative voice and head voice and out-loud-reading voice are all Westshire, there's no need to make your characters say, 'I fought y' towd me the' wos noi wai t' ge' oiver tha' bridge.' (And furthermore;don't make your characters say things like that if most of your characters speak with a Westshire accent. Just let the reader figure out -through setting, narration, or hints - that the main accent is Westshire. Can you imagine how annoying it would be if you had to read a whole book where the four main characters 'tol' li' this?' It's almost impossible to read.)
So keep changes in dialogue to a minimum.
And finally, know your accents. A great example of an author who did it right is Brian Jacques (Redwall). His characters have a diversity of accents and he presents their dialogue in a way that's fun to read and informs the reader of just what they sound like, without stating the obvious or getting annoying. He's very familiar with the accents in his books so his characters use expressions native to their accents that add a very convincing sense of reality to his characters.

Brown and Grey and Black

I saw him sit against a wall

He never ever moved at all.

His eyes were closed, his breath was slow.

Was he awake? I never know.

His feet are narrow and are tall.

The color of the sand in fall

When it is stained, more dark than light.

His soles are tan, his skin is white.

He sat with legs extended out

In front of him, which brought about

The strangest sense of jealousy;

He was more pliable than me.

Against the wall his back was straight

His slender legs - he never ate -

Seemed unattached to his body

Stretched out in flexibility.

His clothes were simple, brown and grey

And black, like night, but unlike day.

His hat, however, was in blue.

A streak of orange, a lighter hue.

Beneath the brim - well worn and frayed -

Dark bangs, left-sweeping, were displayed.

And tufts of black swept up behind

His ears and neck, and brought to mind

Dark eyelashes against his cheeks

In silent thought - he never speaks -

And eyebrows, darker, thicker still,

Like frost upon a window sill.

Behind those lids are pools of brown,

A broken heart, a soul cast down.

He sits, unable to disclose,

And hurts, and hurts, and no one knows.

NaNoWriMo WINNER

Wow. After 30 days of crazy writing I can't believe I did it. I was typing my last words at 11:57pm on the last day, cramming to get them in and literally bouncing up and down as I raced the clock to validate my novel at 11:59pm. It's been hard pushing past insecurity and writer's block, but you know what? It 's been worth it. I knew it would be. I've gotten to know these characters like never before, laughed and cried, loved every second I've spent in their presence, and I can't wait to do it again next year.

But don't think for a moment that I'm going to stop writing. Oh no. Last year I tried NaNo and failed. I made only 20,000 words. It was so hard, I thought I'd never do it again. But failure is only a minor step to success. Hard things make us stronger. This year was comparatively easy. I wrote 30,000 words this year, and somehow didn't feel half as crammed. Part of it is due to giving my schedule over to God, which changes everything and takes away the stress. But part of it is just that he gave me the inspiration and especially the will to get up again.

Guys, I'm so in love with my characters. The more I write them, the more I love them. If you are writing a story, I beg you not to give up. Those characters are amazing people. You just haven't gotten to know them yet. Write even when you don't have inspiration. Write when you feel like every word you put down is stupid. Write when your entire body is screaming 'ANYTHING BUT WRITE'. Write when your brain is begging you to go outside or eat or get on Pinterest or text your friends or doodle. Just write.

Because it's worth it.

It's worth it, I promise. Just write. Writing comes first, then inspiration. Don't wait for inspiration till you feel inspired.

Last year I worked so hard at NaNo that I felt I deserved a break. A month's break turned into two months, and two months into several, until I found it was November again and I'd written almost nothing over the course of the year.
Well that's not happening this year. If God allows it, I'm going to write every blooming day (except Sundays XD). Raising a story is like raising children. There is no break until it's done. If you step away from your characters, you start to drift from them, and it takes an awful lot of work and healing to get them back.

This has been a pretty disorganized blogpost. Sorry. It's 12:19am. I'm going to go to bed and sleep in, and treat myself to a cup of eggnog and relax.
Just kidding. Because a writer's work is never done. If it was, they would no longer be a writer.
I'm going to get up early and fight to(day)morrow's battles with all my strength, because I know who I'm fighting for. And I'm not going to live the aforementioned lazy kind of day. (Well, except for the eggnog part. That... actually was true.)

NaNoWriMo!

Ican'tbelieveIsignedupforthiswhathaveIgottenmyselfintoI'msonotpreparedforthisI'msoscaredofwritingastupidstory

*aHEMhrm* Excuse me! Actually, what I meant to say was YAAAAY!

I'm going to do National Novel Writing Month and it's going to be great and I have no idea what I'm doing and it's gonna be fine and I'm gonna survive somehow...
But seriously;
What makes my story DIFFERENT?  What makes it special in anyway? Here are four things that help:
1) Good characters
2) Good dialogue
3) That it's uniquely my own
and 4) - the most important - is that I have something most writers don't, something J.K.Rowling and Rick Riordan and Eion Colfer didn't have; the Holy Spirit. With such a guide within me, why be anxious? There's nothing to be nervous about. My Helper is (literally) literally the best.

Blog Award Tag

My lovely friend over at http://touchesofeuphoria.blogspot.com/ nominated me to do this. Thanks, Elf!

 Here are the award rules, copied from her blog 1. Thank the blogger who nominated you and link to their blog. 2. Answer the questions that the blogger who nominated you has provided. 3. Nominate four other bloggers. 4. Create ten questions for your nominees and notify them of their nomination. (I'm breaking this rule a bit - I'll ask just four questions rather than ten.)

1. What's your favorite season, and why?

Although I love cold, snow, rain, wind, storms, grey skies, and clouds, fall wins over winter and here's why.
a) It's super short. At least for Colorado it is - October is basically the fall month of the mountains. I relish every moment of it, and it vanishes as quickly as a perfect sunset.
b) Things FINALLY start getting cold.
c) The golden orange creeps down the mountains until they're covered in its brightness. Every day a tree turns from grasshopper to lemon to flame to orange to russet to red to chestnut and to earth brown. The colors, the colors! It's so beautiful it hurts.
d) Pumpkin flavored EVERYTHING.
e) It's only three months till Christmas! Time to start singing the old tunes! (*everyone else groans*)
f) Eggnog.
g) Leaves dancing, laughing, and playing in the wind, crunching underfoot, covering the ground like little prophets of snow.
h) Sweaters, coats, scarves, mittens, muffs, scarves, hats, and scarves. 
i) That cozy, spicy, stay-indoors-with-a-mug-of-tea-and-do-nothing feeling...

2. If you could pick a different time era or decade to visit, which would you choose?
Definitely the time of Christ. 
I don't know what I'd do, exactly. I'm not internally bleeding or possessed. I already ask him to heal and help people every day. I chat with him all the time; what would I have to say? Maybe I'd just awkwardly stand there. It doesn't matter. The chance to be near him, the very idea of being so close to him would totally blow my mind. Aside from being saved in the first place, nothing could feel better. To hear his voice for real, to see the total holiness and total humanness in his eyes - wouldn't pass it up for any other time on earth. 

3) Can you write me one short story prompt? It doesn't have to be long; just a sentance.
Nathan woke up on the roof of the Empire State Building. He sat up, yawning, rubbed his face, and looked down at the ground a staggering thousand feet below. "Ugh," he sighed. "Not again."

Thanks again for tagging me, this was lots of fun!

Now I nominate: 

Maggie Rice at http://homewardtraveling.blogspot.com/

Chloe Womble at http://afangirlsfantasy.blogspot.com/

Elle Ruthig at http://crownandquillpen.blogspot.com/

Eve Patchett at http://penandkey.blogspot.com/

If you like, answer these questions and then let me know!

1. If you could go anywhere in the world, for however long you wanted, for free, and bring one person, where would you go and who would you bring?

2. If you could go to any fictional place in any fictional world and bring one person, where would you go and who would you bring?

3. Pretend you've never heard of [fictional or real person here]. One day you sit next to them on a train for several hours. What do you suppose they'd think of you, and what would you think of them?

4. What's your favorite season and why?

Thanks and love,
Bronze

Actually Writing My Story

Okaythisblogpostisreallylongbutit'sworthreadingIpromise

Dad’s right. Let’s be honest with ourselves and do some calculations. I have at least 19 stories going. If I wrote 1 per year (haha – *sob*) it would still take me 18 years to finish them all. Do you honestly think that in 19 or even 15 years, you’re still gonna be in love with the Cyla story enough to finish it? Do you think that you’ll be able to even look at a page of your writing without crying? You’ll say, nope. This is garbage. Literally every word needs to be rewritten. What is plot, even? Did I know the words character development? What was the point of writing this, again? Ugh, saggy middle syndrome. I’m so bored I’m gonna cry.

So Cyla doesn’t seem that bad to you now. So you think you can do it. But remember this – once I started a story about a fairy princess named Elisabeth. Before I go any further, allow me to point out that I walked right into the fairy princess cliché. One of the worst clichés. I didn’t pull a unique spin on it. I just walked right into it. Now, though I thought I developed my world well – I’d made big maps, made up and drawn some weird plants, drawn the various strange creatures there and even established two cities in one country – I knew nothing about worldbuilding. The royal family was basically a rich American family that dressed ‘medievally’, owned lots of land and had a couple servants. What did they DO all day? Did they have a country to run, by any chance? Nobody knows.

And I won’t even start on my disorganized badguys and Scarabiss.

 I had some cute ideas, and lots of them inspired the imagination and gave me a chance to play in the fantasy world, but I made on so slowly that by the time I’d gotten to maybe chapter 6 I ran out completely. Lost interest for a while, put it on hold. And you know what? I never took it off the back burner. It stayed there until eventually my inevitable new stories were better, richer, and more interesting than my earliest ideas, and I had to come face-to-face with the fact that my old stories weren’t worth it anymore. They needed to be put away, considered ‘Archived’, probably never to be picked up again. Ever. Maybe when I’m 80 I’ll look at them and go, wouldn’t it be fun if I took my first stories and made something beautiful out of – well, garbage, as it were? But honestly? Will I ever have time for something that’s so much just a diverting idea, some pages that give me a bit to daydream about?

The Archives folder of my jump drive is the black pit of my writing life. It’s the place every story dreads most to go. I’ve Archived 21 stories, and that’s not counting the stories I had on paper that I dropped. My characters and stories are constantly contending with each other, competing for my attention, wondering who will be the next one to drop off. If a story doesn’t keep calling my name, getting support from my friends and nagging me to write it, it will eventually sink out of thought and relevance, and when one day I find its dying document moldering in my Side Stories folder, I’ll look at it in disgust and say nope. Not worth it. That ship has sailed. I don’t have time to write a fanfic about Ninjago. Those characters were so poorly developed, I don’t even care anymore. And the story will be condemned to the Archives folder, never to rise again.

I don’t want that to happen to A Way Out. Or Dormaimcraven, for that matter. With other stories I’m not so sure. What would I lose if The Woods of Faira Noran became little more than a memory, or if I gave up trying to finish A Sketch in Time? Am I really attached to those two girls whose personalities are too much like me, too generic, and too similar? Is the fact that I like Valen’s hair and Sketch’s accent enough to keep me in love with their ship, to make me long to Write Them a Beautiful Story? If I can ask myself questions like that, I already know that the time is running short for those stories, and they need a major overhaul, or they need to be given more life, or they just need to be finished.

A Way Out, on the other hand, and Dormaimcraven - and actually a couple of new stories which would be amazing if I’d actually develop them – are still my babies. I still do fanart for them regularly. And I want so, so badly to finish them, to bring them out to their full potentials. But between school and volunteering and reading and social life and art and college and a job and travels and making presents for people and leading various clubs and groups and teams, do I honestly have time to write a story a year?

…

If I did nothing except eat, sleep, write, and yeah go to the bathroom, for a year,  could I honestly finish a story in a year? I don’t know. I’d probably get writer’s block. Even if I didn’t (again I say hah), I could write maybe 5 chapters a month. That’s 60 chapters. Not bad.

But even if I carried on this intense and unrealistic writing routine for 18 years, supernaturally avoiding Writer’s Block and the I Just Had a New Story Idea complex, my life would be a mess socially and as far as jobs go and I would hate myself and all of my stories.

So let’s be honest. Considering I write, ermph, a sentence per day total on average, and even my favorite stories have taken me about a year per two chapters at best,

IS THERE ANY WAY I AM EVER GOING TO FINISH ALL MY STORIES AT THIS RATE?

And because the answer’s obvious, WHY AM I TRYING TO?

I’m not even trying that hard. I’m just saying to myself, ‘Eh, if I dabble in my stories here and there they will get finished before I die, as long as I don’t give up.’

Ok, granted. But honestly. Who in the world could endure years of working slowly away on a story about two cute pixies with little personality and no solid plot? Even you, Bronze, half German, part Scottish, part Irish and all Stubborn, even you don’t have the tenacity or plumb stupidity to keep that up. If you dropped the Princess Elisabeth Kidnapped story, which once meant so much to you, who’s to say A Way Out won’t get dropped some day too?

I was talking to Dad about this last night and he’s right. I have to pick one. I have to pick one and write it. I have to put Dormaimcraven in the corner, even if it hurts Rilf’s feelings and makes Misty cry (wow Misty never cries). Even if it cuts me to the bone. Even if it’s like sending your own children away for five years. I have to stop trying to continue Elias’s story or In Search of a Gift or even my lovely ELTF, and just let them molder. If I come back in five or ten years and I don’t love them anymore, it has to be worth the sacrifice.

Because I love A Way Out. Luke needs to learn that he’s not in control, and that’s okay. Bryndis just needs some light her life, precious broken girl. Eron needs to see that he’s not perfect, life’s not perfect, and imperfect people really, really need love. Joyce needs to come out of her shell and live for others, honestly! And Ashley… well, I love Ashley.

These characters. I can’t let their story die. I keep putting it off and telling myself I don’t have time and trying to balance my writing between them and all my other stories and oh – the headache! It won’t work.

And I know it’s daunting to say, ‘I’m finally gonna do it. I’m just gonna write this story, the whole thing,’ and I know there’s writer’s block ahead and I’m going to make so many mistakes, but it’s worth it. Because writing a story, I’ve finally realized, is for me an all-or-nothing commitment. It’s worth it. I know it’s worth it.

So to wrap it up with a solid application, here’s the plan.

I’m kinda busy with BEST Robotics right now but that’s over on October 31rst. And the next day NaNoWriMo starts. I did that last year and I know I said ‘Never again, it’s too much’, but let’s face it, that may be exactly what I need to kick off a serious, intense period of Actually Writing My Story. So that gives me over a month to rethink AWO, plan, ask myself why I’m doing this, what have I gotten myself into, brainstorm for some semblance of a plot and get to know my characters. Once NaNo starts I’ll make myself another writer’s contract and write for one hour per day, or one page per day, whichever happens first. 

I’m gonna die.

But there’s no other Way Out. If I really care about this story, I’ve got to prove it. I’ve got to commit. It’s worth it.

New Story

Ugh.
Maybe I shouldn't react this way. Maybe I should welcome each new story with open arms and a resolve to do the  best I can for it. Maybe I should be thrilled at the thought of a new story.
But starting a story is like having a baby. It's that much work. Love and pain and tears and effort. Yes, it's a joy to have stories just like it's a joy to have kids, but at about 25 kids one starts to get a little fed up. Especially if they never grow up.
So here I am with 25 stories at least, none of them finished or grown up, and now a new one has shown up at my door, and I can't say no to the precious thing.

I've wanted to write a story in Italy for a while, anyway.  Here's how I started it out.
Oh yeah. And the dialogue's all in Italian. Good luck.

I wrenched my eyes open, gasping for breath as I stared at the ceiling, the cold sweat clustered on my brow.

"Ero solo un sogno, ero solo un sogno," I cried. The horror was still fresh before my eyes, evil and clear and real, but I was awake now and perfectly safe. I had to be. It was only a nightmare. I had those often, almost every night. I just had to push it aside. I could handle it. My breath began to slow down after I had been awake for a moment. All I could see was a vague inky greyness as the above ceiling merged with the wall. Blackness clawed across my vision, blotting out everything else in the familiar room. I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead, sat up, and clutched my blanket in my fingers, feeling its softness.

There. That was real. The little lumps of cotton on the bottom that gave it a worn but fuzzy consistency, and the smoother, doughy cloth on the other side of the blanket. It felt nice, even though my hands were so sweaty.

I stayed there for several minutes, leaning against the wall and breathing in the dark. I felt better, but the nasty feeling of the dream still hovered about me. I couldn't go back to sleep. I didn't want to fall asleep and risk going back to the same nightmare again.

Maybe I'd stay up for a while, and then try sleeping again later. That sometimes helped. I turned my light on and reached for Son of Neptune, and tried to read a while. But the words swam into each other and I couldn't get more than a page done before I dropped the book. No point in this. I was too tired to stay up and I just didn't want to go back to sleep.

I switched positions restlessly, turned onto one side and then the other, sat straight against the wall and slouched low. Finally I sighed. Grabbing my pillow under one arm and dragging my blanket over one shoulder, I stumbled out of the room and into the next one over.

Ambrosi's room was a little lighter than mine, or my eyes had adjusted. I could see his sleeping form and mattress on the floor. His room was cluttered with junk he'd picked up who-knows-where, and still I could not for the life of me figure out why he kept useless old  door-knockers or boxes or candy-wrappers that he was never going to use.

I bumped something hard and heavy with my toe and couldn't help grunting, "Ai," under my breath.

Ambrosi stirred. Ugh. He was such a light sleeper. Yeah, we'd tried sharing a room when we'd first found this place. We were still scared and insecure and flustered then, and it had been a strange place in a strange neighborhood. We'd stuck as close as glue then. Every noise or movement was someone waiting to attack us. But gradually we'd gotten used to the place as we settled in, and it started to get annoying sharing a room with a brother.

For one thing he really did seem to wake at every sound. And while he went to bed early and slept quietly and woke up quietly, I snored and talked in my sleep and tossed and turned and fell off the bed and basically did everything possible to disturb the quiet of the night. At least I didn't do that on purpose. He left his junk all over the floor, all the time, and I got sick of telling him to clean it up. Now that - he did that on purpose.

I shoved clusters of knickknacks out of the way next to Ambrosi's bed and dropped my pillow there, bundling myself up in my blanket and settling in.

"Che problema, Giada?" Ambrosi's voice came softly, muffled by sleep and slurred by drowsiness. He lifted his head a little as if he could see me in the dark.

"Niente. Solo un incubo."

"Capisco."

Good for him. I was glad he didn't ask anything more. His tone said he understood and he cared, and that was all. No interrogation, no further information needed. He didn't try to say something helpful. Nothing he could say would really help. I just needed to know that he was there for me, close by, and he was willing to endure my snores for the rest of the night and let me stay in his room.

That's more than I would have done for him. Bravo, Ambrosi, I thought, as I drifted off to sleep. Bravo.

Villains Twiddling Thier Thumbs

The last thing I want is an inactive antagonist. What is his history? What is he doing when the book starts, and as it continues? I tend to write the protagonists in depth and really get into what’s happening to them. Meanwhile the antagonist is just going about his daily life in the background, and he only pops up when I need him to interact with my characters.

Sometimes that’s okay. Sometimes your villain’s only source of entertainment is antagonizing the good guy. Maybe the villain is just doing his job, or your story only needs him to show up once and a while when convenient.
But I need my villain to be so much more than an evil dude doing his job. Everybody has good times and stormy times, work gets more intense and difficult, or work lulls and relaxes. And, especially in literature, unexpected things happen and interrupt the mundane. The protagonist isn’t the only one who encounters setbacks and has struggles, internal and external. I need to focus on the different conflicts he goes through as he struggles physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

I’m so close, I can almost smell it.

. . .

That was a really weird way to end this blog post. 

How Do Write

I wanted to write. I really did. Furrowing my eyebrows, I clicked on another document. I scrolled absently down until I reached its end, and stared at the blank page for a while. The blank page stared back. After I sat listlessly for a moment, my fingers still resting on the keyboard, the page won the contest. I closed the document disconsolately. I can’t work on any of these, I thought. Is this what writer’s block is like?

I took a final glance over the other documents. I could almost hear the hum of the computer room in my spy story, and almost feel the rough stone road under my sandals in my kingdom story, but I knew that no words would come. After typing out my dilemma for a while and letting autocorrect fix my misspellings of dilemma, I decided that maybe what I needed was a good devotion. That always helped when I felt weary and unable to work on anything. Promptly, I stopped

Runaway Orphans

Nothing can describe how much these songs mean to me, or how much they remind me of my story. If I had to summarize A Way Out in two songs, here they'd be.

Luke, he left from Denver where the air is thin and people are nice,
And he traded in for sea level, for misty rain, what a bitter compromise...

Trying to break free... like a Runaway...