I forgot Rule #1...

[beccastareyes]

No, not 'Never act incautiously around an unarmed, smiling bald old man'; that's the Discworld's Rule #1. My Rule #1 is 'the only way to write is to write'. Meaning that whenever I am just fooling around on the internet thinking 'man, I probably should be writing or drawing something', I should at least open my sketchbook/computer file/notebook and check my to-do list and actually try to work. Because usually it's just the lack of inertia that gets me to procrastinate things. And writing or drawing takes surprisingly little inertia to get me to do, because I like them. If I'm still not in the mood after I stare at things for a while, thats when I can probably assume I really don't want to write or draw right now.


Anyway, today, in addition to a barbecue, I managed to touch up two sketches for art exchanges, and write a bunch of words on Avatar fanfic. The sketches are for art exchanges -- both have backgrounds, and one even has four characters (well, two of them are dogs). I also discovered that doing pen and ink work* actually makes me put a lot more effort into my backgrounds. Probably because Hawk or Anke (not to mention my exchange partner) would be irked at lineart with white space. At least with pen and ink with backgrounds (like this piece that I did for A Twu), you can get a lot of texture just by cross hatching and lines. Though, now that I look at it again, I should have put something beyond the bushes instead of empty sky. There's too much white space there.

* which sometimes I have to do on exchanges, because Some People don't even tell me what their characters' hair colors are. (Hint: if you are reading this, it's not you.)

Also, I've signed up for some exchanges over Christmas -- Yuletide Treasures (a rare-fandom fanfiction exchange) and Yuletart (Yuletide art -- a non-Harry-Potter fanart exchange). In addition to doing NaNoWriMo. I'm promising myself a nice reward if I can finish all three. Double bonus points if I did what I did last year -- finished my NaNo (50K words and a finished rough draft), did my Yuletide assignment, did a Pinch Hit, then wrote two Stocking Stuffers.

They're still nominating fandoms for this year, but you have to agree to participate to be able to nominate.

I'm trying to decide on NaNo topics. I have two ideas. The first is to finally finish a story involving some of my long-time characters. The first attempt was my webcomic, and the second attempt was NaNo '05 (incidentally, the last time I lost NaNo). Plus side is that I have the characters and can write them, and I have a plot. Downside is that this will be the third time I do something with these characters -- there might be too much baggage.

Other idea is much less developed -- I wanted to do a story about what happens when the Chosen One Destined to Defeat the Sealed Evil in a Can (or at least reseal it) dies of a mundane 'accident' a year before s/he's supposed to fight the Evil, and characters scramble around trying to fight evil and figure out who would kill the Chosen One. Problem is the characters are much less developed and I discovered that the way I win NaNo and finish stories is by knowing the characters inside and out. (That and writing. Lots of writing). Meaning I need to spend October coming up with characters.

I'll probably do Idea #1.

Comments

[yuuo.insanejournal.com]

You are one ambitious little girl. And good at meeting your goals. I am terribly jealous.

Hey, don't feel bad about taking a third attack on using those characters for something. This is going to be the fourth theoretical year I try to do Pandora's for NaNo! :D

[beccastareyes.insanejournal.com]

Thanks.