NaNoWriMo - My Cartoon Of The Day - Day 07: Maps

NaNoWriMo - My Cartoon of the Day - Day 4

In the spirit of embracing spontaneity: let’s roll some story dice! Dice are known for generating random plotbunnies, offer challenges and nice silly fun. 

Day 04: Let’s roll the story prompt dice!

Whether you the Most. Serious. Writer or the Absolute. Goofiest. Of. All. I am curious to hear what random chance has brought you!

To whomever is interested: I am participating in Fandom Trumps Hate this year! It's a charity auction: you bid on offers & donate money directly to (selected) charities when you win. In return, you get gifted a personalized fandom gift as a thank you.

My auction page can be found here

The past two years, it's been a pleasure reading the stories written as a thank you for me and conversing with my favourite creators. This year, I'm hoping to enjoy the creator side of the auction as well & I am looking forward to seeing what I can gift away 🤓.

I'm offering a fanart gift for the fandoms: Timeless, White Collar or any of Naomi Novik's published work (Temeraire, Uprooted, Spinning Silver, Scholomance) respectively.

For Timeless fans: the incomparable SallyExactly is hosting an auction as well. She's one of my absolute favorite fandom writers, and seeing as it's good for charity: see if you can outbid me! 🫣🤫😎

Bidding is open till Sun March 5th 2023 8:00 pm EST - so don't wait too long if you're interested!

In these pandemic times, the Timeless story A Butterfly Garden by @vita-s-west is particularly graceful. The focus on Lucy & Flynn returning to a quiet life after all the experiences in their fight with Rittenhouse mirrors in some ways my experience in the current pandemic & the way I battle my anxieties by returning to creativity, stories & nature.

There are many evocative descriptions in the story, and there's a kind of quiet attention throughout that I particularly enjoy.

The Timeless Ballet AU called Ballet-Féerie by @oldshrewsburyian and @qqueenofhades feels like a touch of poetry.

The summary: Garcia Flynn teaches ballet to a class including Amy Preston. Lucy Preston has been her younger sister's guardian since they were orphaned. Hesitant conversations and fraught silences ensue. Also, there's Tchaikovsky.

It's a sweet and yet highly descriptive & emotive story. Lucy is struggling, but persevering & the love between the sisters is palpable as is Lucy's exhaustion. I love that she still pursues her own dreams in the midst of it all. Mr Flynn as the grouchy ballet teacher that knows how to teach little kids dance but doesn't quite know or care to deal with all the intrigue of the dance moms is sweet. I absolutely love the fact that the relationship between Lucy & Flynn is based on friendship first.

Denise & Michelle are wonderful. Jiya is her own person and I love the friendship between her & Lucy. Amy is sweet & precocious & dares to dream outrageous dreams and make them real. Emma is her ruthless self (without a mean streak) and I adore her to-the-pointness.

There is a language beyond words and beyond immediate comprehension, and I miss sitting in theatres and watching modern dance. I have not seen the Nutcracker or many ballets, but this story still evokes for me that feeling of watching magic right in front of your eyes.

It's a story I read when I feel sad or thoughtful. When I long for nostalgia or finding the magic in everyday reality. Our friendships, our relationships, our chosen families: together we make the magic real and felt.

NaNoWriMo - My Cartoon of the Day - Day 24: In Need of Medical Help?

Adventure comes with a price and as writers we often do like to make our main characters pay it. When they get injured, is there a doctor available? Medical staff? Decent supplies? Some painkillers? A nice suite in a hospital or a cold and windy little hut in the middle of nowhere?

Day 24: In Need of Medical Help?

As writers we face our own health challenges: are your wrists strained yet from the excessive typing or are your hands cramping up? Perhaps you tackled a really bad cold or had the flu during November. *waves hi!* NaNoWriMo should not come at the expense of your health, so I wish you all well. We still have a stretch of month to go, so get a good night sleep if you can & let's get this done!

NaNoWriMo - My Cartoon of the Day - Day 30: Crossing the Finish Line

Today is the final day! The last day to write your words and still have them count for your NaNo 2022 project. I have seen many of us come up from behind the last few days, get that final wind and get within a hair of the finish line now. There is still time to get that purple winner's bar and reach your 50000 words. When you are struggling, know we are here to cheer you on! You can do it!

Day 30: Crossing the Finish Line

Tonight: take a moment and feel it down to your bones. You set yourself this task and you faced it down. You are still here at the end of the month. NaNoWriMo is about setting yourself a challenge. It is about succeeding in the extraordinary by attempting something as foolhardy as writing a novel, and something as mundane as creating a daily habit of writing. It requires bravery, persistence, determination and grit. And by still being here, by still writing away till the clock runs out - you are a winner (regardless of purple bar status).

Let's celebrate together tomorrow! For now: let's cheer on anyone who is still writing, who is still pushing on & help eachother through this final glorious day! We can do it!

The Temeraire story The Diplomat's Dragon by indecisive_lotus is such a joy to read.

For those unfamiliar with the Temeraire books by Naomi Novik: it's the Napoleonic wars with dragons and it's marvelous. Arthur Hammond is a diplomat who gets unwittingly & initially unwillingly adopted by an Incan dragon named Churki. As he's been strongly encouraged to retire at the end of the series, he's now run out of excuses to introduce Churki to his family.

Throughout this entire story he's essentially fighting a losing battle to Churki & his mother who outmanouver & outsmart the fiercesome diplomat. It's hilarious to behold how Hammond finds himself at a loss and fails to see the traps he falls into, while still wanting to maintain his decorum & social graces.

The language of the story mimics that of the period and the social context of the time is well-represented and thought out.

I enjoy the humor of this story, the increasing desperation of Hammond, the character portrayals. Churki is very in character, and, as a massive dragon, knows when to adopt the customs of the English gentry when it suits her, but also how to completely ignore them when it suits her purposes better.

Mrs Carter is an intriguing dragon's companion. I look forward to reading more of this story & how it develops, for it's been wonderful to spend more time with these characters.

NaNoWriMo - My Cartoon of the Day - Day 08: Hell Week

The first week of NaNo flew by in a rush and now we are already in week two. Traditionally, the second week of NaNo is considered especially hard as self doubt comes out to play for many of us, tiredness sets in and starts to demand more attention, and yet: we are still here!

Day 08: Put Up Your Umbrellas to Guard Against Hell Week

So: let us put up our umbrellas against the possible storms ahead and brace ourselves against this challenge: we can DO this together.

NaNoWriMo - My Cartoon of the Day - Day 22: Which Stories Inspire You?

I fulfilled a childhood dream and have a mini-library in my attic filled with my favourite books. I love browsing through my shelves and findings favourites to read. Writing well starts with reading often. What do you enjoy? What works for you (or doesn't)? How do stories work? For this NaNo challenge: what stories inspire you and what elements are you paying homage to?

Day 22: Which Stories Inspire You?

Bring an element of fairy tales into your science fiction story, add dragons to your historical fiction and incorporate a romance trope into your gritty realistic thriller. Steal your concepts liberally and write generously and keep telling your story!

NaNoWriMo - My Cartoon of the Day - Day 25: Channeling Atlas: Carrying the World on Your Shoulders

We are Atlas: we not only dreamt up our story worlds, we are singlehandedly holding them up in the sky and breathing life into them. As writers, the weight of our story can sometimes bear us down as we struggle with finding a way to make sense of our narrative.

Day 25: Channeling Atlas: Carrying the World on Your Shoulders

As our characters run rampant and have all kinds of ideas for what is happening, as our plotpoints diverge and refuse to come back together to be neatly tied off, as self doubt creeps in and rears its head when our first draft doesn't look as polished as we'd secretly hoped: we set our shoulders, bear the weight and keep. it. high!

We are in the final stretch of NaNo now. For some exhaustion may be setting in, while others are celebrating their early victories. Remember: your story depends on you to hold it up; we can bear its weight & there is still time. Keep writing!