Confessions of a Pluviophile

As many of my Internet friends know, I have a word that I really like now. I would say it's my favorite word, but it's not. It's too hipster for me. Yes, that is a thing in my mind.

But that word is pluviophile. It means, in essence, someone who loves the rain.

I would think that someone who calls themselves Rain on the Internet would fall under this. *ahem*

I've been thinking a lot about pluviophilia lately, and I had this idea. I've always wanted to a rant book on Wattpad, so I made a cover for it.

Yes indeed, Confessions of a Pluviophile.

But then I realized that I didn't need a rant book. I have a blog, for crying out loud!

From now on, you will be seeing any rants that would have been going in the Confessions of a Pluviophile book coming on here. I hope you don't mind!

-Rain

The NaNo Diaries: Finished...?

November 24, 2013

Last night, I hit the goal. 50,000 words are now completed for my story Raven Song.

50,000 words.

Done a week before it was due. Now that shows me that I've progressed from previous years, where I was working up to the last few hours. I've always made it, however. It's just that this time November will be a little bit more relaxing in the end.

It was so nice seeing me pass the finish line. It felt like it was impossible that I had managed to do it. It was like my mind simply could not believe that I had done such a thing. The story feels nowhere near finished, that much is for sure. But it's got so much already written that I suppose I should be counting my blessings.

The problem with this is that now I have to go through the process of editing and such. I've been splitting up my chunks of writing into individual snippets. Let's just say that I'm only about halfway through and I have approximately 80 snippets of writing at the moment. I have to finish making all of those snippets.

Then once I have my 200 different snippets (that might not be an exaggeration, we'll see) I'll have to put them in order and group them together. I need to form a cohesive story out of a bunch of loosely linked moments. But I've done this sort of thing before...just not with 50,000 words/

I think the first order of business is to make a plan of what I want to happen in this story. Without a base, everything will just crumble, yeah?

-Rain

The NaNo Diaries: The Final Countdown

November 22, 2013

Okay, perhaps the title is a little bit ahead of where I am. But I have less than 5K words left to write. Less than a tenth of my novel. If I push myself, I will be finished soon. Very soon. I have my plans and all, but actually writing all those words is so different than talking about writing them. It seems like so little and so much at the same time.

But the thing is, I've never written a novel like this. And by "this," I mean...

25% of my novel was initially handwritten. Pieces of notebook paper were used time and time again in order to create a fair portion of my story. That would be about 12.5K words once it was all done. It still can't compare to how many notes I have for World History, though.

25% of my novel came from 750 Words. For those of you don't know, I use a writing program which has you write 750 words each and every day. I've been using that in order to create even more of my story. By pushing myself to write it all within 15 minutes, I find myself creating new plotlines and lots of words in short amounts of time.

The last 50% chunk of my novel comes from me sitting down like a proper author and typing away. This is what I have been doing for so long, and it's starting to come naturally. I try to take it 50, 100, or 250 words at a time. And by golly, it works.

We'll see how tomorrow fares.

-Rain

The NaNo Diaries: The Madness Sets In

November 18, 2013

I should be finishing in a few days.

It's really weird to think that.

I will be finishing in a few days.

Especially if I get my act together and write more than what's necessary. At the current rate I'm going at, I should be done in a little under a week. If I step it up, I could have Raven Song over 50,000 words before the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special. I could spend the Day of the Doctor without having to worry about writing my story.

The thing is, it'll still be National Novel Writing Month. I've already started planning for what I'm going to do next.

Which is plan.

When it comes to most of my stories, I make at least a skeleton outline of what I want to happen during the story. Some of them are actually very specific. I had one plan that had more words than each chapter of that particular story did. I typically use them just to keep the plot on track and make sure everything works out in a fairly well paced manner.

But I don't do that for NaNoWriMo. I don't have to write in order when it comes to this, so I jump all over the place. I haven't finished the second chapter yet, it's strange. The thing is, I know the basic gist of the story. I know there's going to be a few specific events that must go in a certain sequence.

That still leaves me with thousands of words, though. That's why I'm going to plan out the novel once I've gotten over the 50K mark. If I can do that, then I can make sure that it'll be ready to be posted on Wattpad.

Yeah. That'll be fun.

-Rain

Why I Write

Oh goodness. The story of how I became a writer is a long and bumpy one, but throughout the entire plotline of my life I've found that my motivation to create stories and characters and express them through words has been the same.

I write for myself.

I know it makes me sound selfish and silly, but it's true. I write for myself. I write to improve myself and to see myself create something. I don't write for other people to read it, not in the way that most people would assume so, anyways. I mean, I've got thousands upon thousands of words that will never be seen by anyone but myself. It's not because they're bad (although some of them are, heh). It's because it's my own personal store of stories.

There are so many plots that swirl around in my head that I have written down just so I can read them and cherish them. Some of them have never even left my head, whether it be through my fingers typing away or through my mouth. I hoarde my stories like a dragon hoardes its gold, sitting atop the mounds of words like they were coins.

But the thing is, sometimes after writing for myself I feel the push to have other people read it. I'm so proud of what I've created for myself that I want other people to come and make me feel good about it. There's only so much praise you can give yourself, after all.

At the same time, I'm also my biggest critic. When I post things out on the Internet, I constantly feel a bit of doubt about it. I typically hate half the stuff I put out but love it at the same time. When someone comes along and critiques anything, anything, I take it far to seriously. I take the blame upon myself.

I keep on writing for myself despite of all of this. I enjoy it far too much to stop. It's really a shame that I feel myself falling apart over the simplest things. It's part of the reason I keep so many of my stories to myself, in fear that they'll be picked apart and I'll end up hating myself for it. If I criticize myself, it doesn't burn the same way as if someone else criticized me. I can improve myself, building upon myself.

Some will say I need to outside push in order to grow. But sometimes I'm content being bottled up with my own stories and just reading over the plots and ideas I had a long time ago. I read over my old stories all the time and fall in love with them. I see the flaws and I try to correct them. I'm still blind to some of the problems, it's true.

But the fact of the matter is, I write for myself. No matter what anyone says, I will continue writing. Sure, I might rip down my old stories from a website, delete lots of text in spite of what someone's said, decide to never be judged in a writing competition again, but I will keep writing.

I write for myself, and no one else.

-Rain

The NaNo Diaries: I'll Be A Neutron, Thank You

November 14, 2013

Today is a very neutral day for me. I'm no positive proton or negative electron. Just a neutral neutron. (And if you understand what neutron cream means, brownie points for you. Lots of 'em.) First and foremost in this is my novel, of course. It's going well, I'd have to say. I mean, I'm pretty darn far ahead of schedule, that's always a nice thing.

But at the same time, I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I don't know what it is. Sometimes it gets difficult to write an entire front-and-back page of my NaNoWriMo novel, all of this done in the few free seconds I have during class. And yet, I've done it every schoolday so far this month. Granted, that actually hasn't been that many, but still.

My main goal for this is going to be to finish before the deadline. The past few years were more or less "Okay, it's November 30th and I have things to do before midnight!" Of course, I made it both times, but it would be really fulfilling to finish it before then. The thing is, I want some sort of numerical proof that I've grown as a writer.

Well, in other news, I feel like I have so many conflicting emotions that I just end up with a whole of nothing. I suppose this is how Sherlock Holmes functions. It's pretty productive, I must say. I mean, I got stuff done. That is, after I stopped panicking due to the disappearance of my phone. There just are some things that aren't worth agonizing over. Things that aren't worth fighting over. Gifs that aren't worth making because they're too damn hard.

Maybe tomorrow I'll be a proton. Or maybe I'll be an electron.

But I may as well be a neutron again.

-Rain

The NaNo Diaries: "Struggling"

November 10, 2013

Yesterday was the day of marathon writing. Even though I completely failed to reach my goal, I still wrote quite a bit. It wasn't all that difficult, either. I mean, I wrote 6.5K words yesterday just for NaNoWriMo-that's not including the writing I did for all of my other stories. Yet I still feel disappointed in myself. I'm "struggling" without really struggling.

I suppose I should be happy about where I'm at in my writing, however. I have over 20K words at this point and still have many ideas to put together. This is no masterpiece, I'm sure of it, but it has potential. I enjoy writing it, and that's what matters.

The good news is that inspiration is coming from everywhere. Here's an example of that. It seems like all of a sudden my friends are all speaking about ravens and writing desks and their similarities. Of course, I am writing a story where the theme of ravens is a pretty important one. (You don't name a story Raven Song and then not involve any ravens.) I integrated it into my story. I made a whole new scene up. And it worked.

The thing about November is that it's like a massive month of many things. NaNoWriMo was my main focus yesterday, but there's so many other things going on that I'm a bit afraid the rest of my writing is just going to have to suffer because of it. There's the obvious things (aka Thanksgiving and schoolwork) and then there's the not-so-obvious things.

The fact of the matter is, I started an exercise program at the beginning of this month. It's a six week long thing, which means I will be recreating my body throughout the month of November. I've been getting progress even though it's only a been a bit over a week. That makes me happy.

But then there's also auditions for my musical coming up at school. Of course, I am petrified. I have no clue how this is going to go. I'm going to try my best as always...but sometimes your best just isn't enough. I've gone through that enough to realize that much at least.

-Rain