The "What Next?" Of Writing

I finally finished The Prince and The Lionheart, the second novel in my trilogy. This novel was very problematic and it's going to take a lot of work when I finally get around to editing, but writing a book isn't supposed to be easy. The book was finished at 210 pages with 132,262 words and seventeen chapters, which isn't anywhere near the length of the first one when I finished it, but that's okay. It gives me more room to fix everything and not have to worry about it being too long, because the first book in the trilogy, The Daughter of Robin Hood, is turning into a monster with all of the editing that needs to be done.

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Before I go on, let me tell you what these two books are about. It starts with the first one, The Daughter of Robin Hood. The title may say it all, but it's about Lenora Hood, but she's known as Lee by her close friends and family. She ran away from her father when she was sixteen. She formed her own band of thieves and three years later, she's nineteen and tired of running, but before she goes into a permanent hiding, she tells her band of thieves that she wants to pull off one last heist. She wants to steal the prince's fortune. But not just any prince, Prince Nikola of Hoods Windsor.
When Robin Hood and his Merry Men succeeded in overthrowing the Sheriff of Nottingham, Richard the Lionhearted returned and to prevent the crimes of the Sheriff ever happening again, they formed twelve new kingdoms to ease taxes and make it fairer for the people. Hoods Windsor was named after Robin Hood himself, and Locksley rests at it's borders. Lee thinks that if she can steal Prince Nikola's fortune, it will prove to everyone that she's greater than her father, because she not only stole from the place she had come from, but because she had done something he never would have done.
However, things don't go according to plan. Not only is her father there, but she ends up falling in love with the prince, something she promised she wouldn't do. She needs to decide whether she wants to continue being the wanted thief or if she wants to be the good guy from now on and do the right thing for once.

By explaining the next book, I'm probably going to give away the ending of The Daughter of Robin Hood. Oops.
The Prince and The Lionheart follows Lee and her band of thieves, but she's made amends with her father and he's brought his Merry Men into the mix too. Besides that, Nikola denounced his crown and ran off with them. They're outlaws now, and they need to figure out how to stop King Matthew, Nikola's father, from being a tyrant. They discover that the kingdoms are splitting and people are taking sides, but they're not sure why. They also discover that Nikola's eight year old brother is being abused so Lee sends him, one of her thieves and Nikola's best friend off to Hoods Windsor to save them. Getting his little brother out of the castle isn't as easy as he thought it would be, because of this guy named Crevan Delaney. He's the Sheriff of Nottingham's son and he has it it out for Lee because he's seeking revenge for his late father.
As for Lee, Robin, her band of thieves and the Merry Men, King Leon, Richard the Lionhearted's son, invites them to join a council that's trying to figure out just the same things as Lee: how to stop the tyranny and save the people. It's a council of kings and thieves. Lee quickly realizes that no one trusts her and her thieves because of their bad reputations, so she decides to take action against this and vanish so they can operate quietly and earn everyone's trust.

After typing that out, I can't tell whether that paragraph is shorter because the book is shorter or if there just isn't as much to say about this novel. Huh.

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Just like the first one, I reached the last line and saved the document and felt like it wasn't quite finished yet, but there was nothing left to write. The ending wasn't emotional enough and the timeline needs fixed, among other things that need fixed, but that was left for another day because I was so excited. And then I was wondering, "what now?" There was nothing left to write in The Prince and The Lionheart. No more scenes, no more chapters, no more information that the reader needs to know. There's just one unrelated scene that I want to write for my own pleasure, and it has no place in the novel. But after I write that little scene? I could go back to editing the first book, but I'm a little stuck and I'm making it longer than it needs to be and I don't have very much confidence in that book. I could edit book two, but after I just finished that pain in the neck of a book, I want to take a break from Lee's world.

My plan is to hopefully write a modern day novel called The Faultless Stars. I almost wrote this novel for Camp NaNoWriMo in July (50,000 words in 31 days), but I had already started The Prince and The Lionheart and didn't want to stop. The Faultless Stars (or code name, Space: The Final Frontier) was something that happened when I was hanging out with my friend and just randomly said "it would be cool to write a novel like Doctor Who about the wonder of the universe except it would be hard to keep it from being too much like Doctor Who." So it resulted in a Pinterest board called Space: The Final Frontier (the pinterest board), and it was just a collection of pictures concerning space.
Was. It was.
It became an idea with a real title. The main character is Corrie Parvin. She had a crappy high school experience. Her parents are millionaires with a million dollar business, so Corrie was Miss Popular in high school and was more concerned about popularity and friends and appearances. It didn't help that her parents were more concerned about their business and crumbling relationship than their daughter. Corrie thought she needed the attention, but her parents started fighting and Corrie was losing friends and fast. When she graduated, her parents split up and gave her the choice between staying in Chicago or going to L.A., but Corrie ran off to NYC instead. She met some good friends there and become a Christian. It was a completely fresh start for her.
A few years later, and she's lost her best friend because he made a mistake. it's Christmastime and she's alone once again, but then she meets this guy. To everyone else he's a crazed man that belongs in a mental hospital, but to Corrie, he's the escape she needs. Everyone he's met in New York City calls him The Star Man, and he doesn't know what else to call himself so he takes up the nickname, but Corrie decides he looks more like a Finn. He tells her all of these stories of how he traveled space and went farther than anyone ever should have, and also how he left who he used to be out there. Corrie wants to get away so she doesn't have to be alone, so they go to outer space to find what Finn left behind in the stars.
But it is't even about them. I thought their story was about the stars, but in the end, it isn't really that either. I'm drawn to this novel because it's finally something that heavily involves Christianity and God. Corrie relies heavily on her faith in God and she knows she would be a train wreck without Him. It makes me really happy to finally bring that into my writing. I'm excited to start writing this. It's waited long enough.

p.s. in case you're wondering, the third book in the trilogy is going to be called The Sins of Their Fathers and I plan on writing it in November for Nation Novel Writing Month (50,000 words in 30 days) so my goal is to hopefully start and finish The Faultless Stars by then.

Being a Christian

Recently I was asked "what does being a Christian mean to you?" and I replied with something along the lines of "it means being different and having something to stand up for." But it's so much more than that. Now that I've had more time to think about the question, I've had more time to think about all of the things that I wish I had said. 

Like I said, being a Christian is more than just being different and having something to stand up for. It's being saved by the blood of Jesus Christ and being washed clean of your sins by His blood. It's never being alone because God is always with you. That in itself is a real comfort to me because I've known what it feels like to be alone, but God is always with me, so I never have to feel alone.

 It's also having someone to go to that knows more than we could possibly imagine. Because we're just humans. We don't know everything, no matter how much we'd like to believe so. But God knows everything. He created the heavens and the earth and the depths of the sea and the stars in the sky and the far off galaxies that we can't even see from where we stand, but He breathed us to life. He knew us before we were even in the womb. Without God, we're nothing. Our days on earth are numbered and after we're gone, we'll be forgotten, but if we have Jesus in our hearts and we've accepted Him as Savior, admitting that we've sinned and asking for forgiveness from those sins, we can have something so much better after death than being forgotten by the people of earth that will just move on. We get to go to heaven, to see God face to face. 

But there's still so much more than that. God is great. He's amazing and awesome and powerful enough to have created the heavens and the earth in the beginning (Genesis 1:1 - "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"). All of the beauty that we see in this world was all created by His hands. All of these complicated science things with atoms and microscopic particles that we can't see but the biology books tell us exist and they're always active--all of those tiny little things that make up this world, they were all created by God. Everything is far too complex to have simply happened. Everything from the tiny caterpillar that turns into the beautiful butterfly to the galaxies ten million light years away that we'll never get to was all created by God. And then He created us, all of us. We were created by God. We didn't just happen. We weren't thrown out into the world to be just the next person to make the population clock go up a number. We were created for something so much more than this.

God loved us enough to create us. He even loved us enough to send His son Jesus Christ to die on the cross to save us from our sins. God loves us and it's the greatest love in the world. Another thing that I wish I had said was that being a Christian means to me that I get to have a close and personal relationship with God, and that's irreplaceable. No matter what stupid crap I do, God won't ever leave me. But I can't say that about people. Everyone makes mistakes and messes up, and people don't stay and some relationships don't last forever and it doesn't take much to end them, but no matter how far I go astray, God will always be faithful and will always be loyal. If I go too far out, God will always be waiting for me to come back. And you can't say that about everyone. 

I get to have a relationship with God, who created everything I know and love, and placed me here for a reason only He knows. But besides that, I have someone I can always go to. I can go to Him for comfort and healing and just help, because I've needed a lot of it in the past year. But because I've needed help that only God can give, I've become so much closer to Him. Before the year started, I took everything for granted and just kind of ignored everything. But something happened that brought me closer to God, and now I wonder why I even tried to get along by myself. There's a greater comfort knowing that I always have God to run to when something's wrong, and when it's late at night and no one's awake and I need someone, God is there. Now I thank God for everything, because without Him, I would have nothing. Through thick and thin, He has provided all of my needs and He's kept a roof over my head and clothes on my back when we could barely afford it.

So being a Christian. I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and now I can call myself a Christian. To me, it means having a relationship with God and knowing He'll take care of me and comfort me and always be there for me, because He loves me, and His love is something more than I could even ask for. The last thought I have is on baptism. I never understood it, but I went to summer camp and they were the best five days that made my summer go from kinda boring to super amazing. I learned so much at camp, and it was amazing to have five days of nothing but worshiping God, learning more about Him, spending time with other high school seniors and making new friends from church. But one thing I learned about was baptism, and one of things we do through baptism is declare our faith in Jesus Christ, so I'm going to do just that on 9/15/13. 
I think it's about time too. 

Beautiful Words

Words are beautiful. You can do so many things with them and you can mold them into these sentences to put down a certain thought. You can use them like poetry even if you're not writing poetry. You can craft them to portray a certain thought or feeling or put words to an artist who was trying to show you his creative genius.  

Sometimes, the word itself looks beautiful. Like farewell. I used that Sunday while I was editing my book. According to Merriam-Webster Online, it means "get along well--used interjectionally with to or by one departing." 
It's not goodbye. It's more like wishing someone good health on their journey or adventure. And that's kind of beautiful, because it's not goodbye. There's so much finality in the word goodbye and goodbye is always thought of as a sad word, and goodbyes are an entirely different thing. But with farewell, it's like you're wishing them well (which is kind of literal) on whatever they're setting off to do and that you have hopes to see them again. 

Words are funny things. They don't look like much, but when used properly, they have the power to build someone up or tear them down. They can be used to tell an entire story in one sentence or less than six words. This is one of the many things that makes being a writer fun. Writers have an entire English language at their disposal, but they have to choose just the right words in just the right order simply to portray meaning and feeling in one line. 

My Awesome Weekend

I know this is a little delayed, but my weekend was too awesome to go without a blog post for it. My weekend really started on Thursday (yeah, I know that's a weekday ha). It was the last day of classes for me, even though I still have to go through the summer with school (not sacrificing a social life, of course), but this means I can sleep in Monday through Saturday now! And then Friday came and I went back to my writing group that I'm in on Facebook with some friends. I took a quick break, but I'm back now and I missed them so much. 

And then Saturday came along. I had been waiting for Saturday to come for some time. I went shopping with one of my best friends and her mom, and I had a spectacular time. We went to Barnes and Noble and I bought this spectacular leather bound journal. I'm probably going to use it for random story related things, but I think I'm mainly going to use it for poetry. I'm not a very good poet, so I need to practice because one of my new characters is a poet, meaning I'm going to have to incorporate his poetry into the story, meaning I'm going to have to practice my poetry. The things authors do for their characters.

After spending some time in Barnes and Noble, we went to Panera for lunch and had a fun time and then we went to Target. We looked at clothes and stuff and I tried on this cute little dress that almost had a Parisian style to it. Unfortunately they didn't have my size, so I ordered it offline. I'm excited. It's perfect for tea parties (I've never been to a tea party, and I never thought I'd want to go to one, but now I'm going to have the perfect dress for it!). At Target I bought a package of three more notebooks. I didn't necessarily need them, but I liked the designs on the cover and I figured it was my birthday, I do what I want (Thor).

After Target, we came back for a birthday party. I never knew birthday parties could be so much fun! I had such an amazing time! My friend made this spectacular cake based off of my book. It was so amazing I cried when I saw it. I just had a blast, and then afterward my three of my close friends slash writing buddies and I got some time to hang out and talk and have fun. We went for a walk and then we took pictures and it was just a blast. That night was the most fun I've had in a while and that birthday was the most amazing birthday I've had in a while. Oh, and I can't forget the amazing graphics that 

And then after that, Sunday came and it was the perfect way to end such a good weekend. Church in the morning was really great, on the way home we passed by this awesome motorcycle dude pulling out of his driveway and he was only awesome because he was dressed in like this European style with white gloves, a trench coat and it was just cool, and then a relaxing afternoon in which I watched Saturday night's episode of Doctor Who (which was amazing, by the way!) and then the season finale to Once Upon a Time, which was the most amazing season finale I have ever seen. Of course I freaked out most of the time, but now I can finally like Captain Hook again, which is awesome. Season Three looks like it's going to be spectacular.

I just wanted to say again, thank you to everyone who helped make Saturday so amazing and came out Saturday night! I'm really blessed to have so many amazing friends! 

Hugs,

Christina

What a Great Morning

I had such a great morning I thought I'd write a blog post about it. Church was absolutely amazing. I love going to church and coming back and just thinking, "wow, that was a great way to spend my Sunday morning." That's basically every Sunday for me, but even more so when I actually drag myself out of bed to go to the high school service. I should do that more often. I never regret it. Anyway, another reason why I had such a great morning was because I heard some things I needed to hear.

It's been tough ever since January blew in on a harsh gust of a winter wind. It wasn't a "happy New Year." But you know what? It's okay. There are times when, hands down, it is NOT okay, and especially over the past two weeks, and if you saw yesterday's blog post, there's that too. But it's okay. I may have my things to deal with right now, but God is here for me, and He's always there when I need someone to go. This is His plan for my life and He is in control, and that's pretty amazing. 

I may not get it right now, but someday I will, but that doesn't matter. Out of these things I'm going through, I've realized that there's more to life than just winging it. I'm not going to get anywhere without God's help. There's a great deal of comfort that comes from just letting go of all of my worries and stepping back and saying, "God, you can deal with this. I don't know what the right decision is." 

Matthew 6:34 says "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of it's own." 

Another thing is that I worry. I worry a lot. About everything. Especially the future. That's really unnecessary.  I don't need to worry about anything. If I just leave all of my worries for God, He takes care of them for me. Sometimes I forget this, but other times I remember just letting Him deal with the things I would otherwise be worried about. God does take care of these things, and I even stop worrying about them and thinking about them and then afterward look back and realize that they were taken care of for me, and then I have the ability to thank God for doing that for me.

I think it's a beautiful thing to look back and thank God for all He's done for me.

On Loneliness

During the week, I'm home alone while my dad and brother are at work. I do school, I write, I procrastinate writing on Facebook and Pinterest, I look forward to when they come home so I have someone to talk to. And I never enjoyed busy days when I wasn't at home and couldn't even think about writing, but I started enjoying Thursdays, even though it involved being out of the house from 9 to 6 for homeschool classes at church. Of course, I'm also looking forward to the last day so I can get a break from these busy days, but a tiny part of me enjoys them because I'm around people all day instead of being home alone. 

I look forward to Saturdays now. They used to be just another day, but now it's a day when my dad and my brother are home and I have people to talk to. Of course, when they're busy on Saturdays doing whatever they need to do, it gets a little disappointing. But, I think, out of this loneliness came two new characters for my new book that I just started writing. Their names are Cas Marinus and Rosemary Neaveh (ni-VAY-a). They're both orphans and they're both lonely. Neither of them have any good friends (luckily I'm not like them and I have some really awesome friends.) Cas has a few friends but no one that's available to talk to when he needs it. Rosemary has her adopted family, and she loves them, but she's looking for something more.

It's kind of funny, though. I started writing this book, Archi Pelago, last Sunday, and now whenever I open up the document and work on it, I don't feel lonely anymore. It's therapy, I suppose. The thing is, these characters both believe in God. They're both born again Christians. They can't get it in their stupid heads that they're never truly alone. I have the same problem. I always have someone to talk to: God. So I guess I really shouldn't feel lonely.

Oh, and I think I just called myself a stupid head. Oh well.

The Bane to my Existence

The bane to my existence is currently editing. It's that thing that happens after you've written a book. Admittedly, The Daughter of Robin Hood is the first thing I've ever had to edit, so I kind of put it off for a while thinking the book was so big and intimidating that it would be too hard, but then I actually started late March/early April and it wasn't so bad. I had chapter one edited, and then I printed it out and stuck it in a binder so it can be easier reading for family when I get to sharing it, and then two days later chapter two was finished. Another two days and chapter three was completed, and then came none other than chapter four. That's when it started getting hard. Chapters 1-3 only took two days each, so I figured it would go quick and easy for the entire book and I would have it finished before June and go to the next step, but boy, was I wrong.

Chapter four took me about four-five days. While I marked it on my calender, I only marked what day I finished the chapter on, not what day I started. Anyway, once chapter four was finally finished, I started chapter five, which was even worse. It took me an entire week to edit that chapter. Now I'm stuck at chapter six. I'm absolutely STUCK. It didn't take long for me to get stuck.

See, the thing is, currently with my editing process, the current dialogue is the outer halves of an Oreo cookie. I have those chocolately bits of goodness, but I don't have the creme in the middle. I'm editing and adding that creme in between to have a delicious thing of goodness. I need to edit, and I didn't realize how badly I needed to edit (not that I thought it wouldn't need it, there are some things that don't work anymore), but this is a hard process, adding that creme in between the cookie halves. I suppose if novels started out with that creme in between, everyone would write books.

It doesn't help that I've been inspired for a new story. I've been planning this story called Archi Pelago (which means ancient sea in Greek, and yes it's usually spelled archipelago but for creative reasons my title is going to be Archi Pelago), and I'm dying to start writing it, but I'm absolutely torn. I want to edit TDRH so I can move on to the next step of trying to get it published, but I also want to start this new story. It's been tugging at my sleeve for about two and a half weeks. I have the character names, a few backgrounds, I know quite a bit about the characters, but I just don't know if I should start writing a new story. I'm afraid if I start writing something new, I'll get so wrapped up in it that I'll forget all about my precious TDRH. The Daughter of Robin Hood doesn't deserve to be left in the corner to collect dust.

Oh, the problems of being a writer. Aren't they lovely? I almost started Archi Pelago yesterday, too, but I need a good opening line. So I think I'll procrastinate on everything and read a good book instead.

--Christina