My Writing Journey (So Far)

Hello all~

             Today I added another finished (rough draft) book to my collection, which makes it...six...now....

My first actual novel I began and finished during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, which is in November - you've got 30 days to write 50,000 words: http://nanowrimo.org/) of 2010, almost four years ago. Let's rewind a bit first - I'm feeling story time! 

I wrote my very first ever chapter story completely from my imagination around Christmas of 2007, and that ended up being 14 pages (7,500 words) in Word, which was monumental for the time and I was very proud (let me put it into perspective - I was thirteen years old). Keep in mind, the stories themselves were pretty dumb, but the essence was cool, at least to my teenage brain. And I didn't stop. I wrote a sequel (9 pages, 5,000 words), a third installment (a whopping 27 pages and 15,000 words!), AND a fourth one (34 pages, 17,600 words), AAAAND I began to write a fifth book but I guess I got busy or something because I just dropped it (only got to be 4,000 words anyway, and if I recall, the story was starting to get suuuuper cray). All of these were written before an entire year passed. When I was 13-14 years old, I dedicated 49,100 words to this idea I had, and I wrote it all in a year. (I hadn't ever actually gone back to see how many words they were or added them up, so this is even very intriguing as well as surprising to me). I can easily say, in writing those dumb stories, I fell completely and utterly in love with writing.

So, back to my first real novel in 2010. Between 2007/2008 and 2010, I wrote little blurbs of things, short stories and whatever. During the summer of 2010, I had the incredible pleasure of participating in the Young Writers Workshop at UVA for 3 intensive weeks of nothing but writing, which is the event in my life that really jump started my serious writing journey. However, I didn't pick up the idea of trying to write a full-length novel until I was introduced to NaNoWriMo that year. I got really excited by the idea and figured what the heck, I'd try it. I'd pledge to write at least 50,000 words on a piece of fiction of mine in a month. Now, before, I had written almost 50,000 words over the course of an entire year. Granted, I had grown up a little since then, but to cram all that work into 30 days? It seemed daunting, incredibly so, at first. But then I started writing on the idea, just kept writing and writing, and I got it done in a month. At it's finished stage, it came out at 53,600 words. My first novel was born, November of 2010. After that, it's obvious that I simply couldn't stop writing.

That next summer, 2011, I wrote a novella, 29,500 words. NaNoWriMo that same year, I wrote another novel, 52,400 words. That next year, 2012, is when things started to get serious. I was becoming tired of writing one-book stories - I needed something more, at least a book and a sequel or something. I had been sketching out and tossing around ideas for three separate books revolving basically around the same idea, within the same universe, for years. Years. (Some of the word documents holding the sketches and ideas dated back to my time in Peru, which was over 3 years ago.) It was NaNoWriMo of 2012, during my very first Freshman semester, that I penned the first idea. It's 92,700 words. I had broken the 50,000 word barrier I was under for the first three; I could never seem to get much past it. So this satisfied me for a while, but then, the sequel grew, and then it grew into a trilogy. The sequel, which I penned last summer (2013), turned out 54,600 words. And, friends, I'm telling you all this, because today marks the day that I finished my first trilogy. The third installment weighed in at 54,500, before I've gotten a chance to read back through it and do some quick revisions and additions. Just a couple hours ago, I declared the rough rough draft complete. I am the proud owner of a trilogy. And you may not care, which is okay with me, because I'm pretty darn pumped about it.

The little take-away from this story (if you’re a writer and you care about these things) I can give you is that starting and finishing that very first full-length novel idea is tough. Goodness, it is sooooo touuuugh. I've started millions of things, and finished only these. Some of them I'd rather pitch, but they're my babies and we're proud of each other. So just write, okay? If you want to write a novel, do it. Don't psych yourself out, don't demoralize yourself - just. do it. That first one is hard, but any after that are so much easier, because you have proved to yourself that yes, you can write a novel, because hey YOU'VE ALREADY DONE IT! NaNoWriMo proved the perfect kick in the pants to motivate me to do just that, so if a countdown helps you, then I encourage you to try that. Now that I'm in college, it's hard to find the time in November to write a novel, so now I just do them over Winter and Summer break ;)

Writing is hard, I know. But to be able to step back and take a look at that rough idea all laid out, well...that's one of the sweetest feelings an author can experience.

Ta!
V

Burning Truth

Her legs wouldn't support her and her breath wouldn't fill her. There was far too much ringing silence in her mind to allow thought. Her body ached and stomach convulsed until she ceased to feel anything at all. The dark wall she stared at became fuzzy and out of focus, turning darker still as chaos roared through her head, consuming everything in raging fire and leaving nothing but smoldering ash in its wake.

Everything she ever cared about was gone.

And he had taken her heart with him.

----------------

Thoughts. Think what you want of them.

-Vicki

The Stuff of Night Terrors

Bleed Out My Decay

I didn't know where I was; all I knew was that it wasn't anywhere safe, it was nowhere I wanted to be. Panic choked me, leaving me helpless, as quiet tears streamed down my battered cheeks. I had an impending sense that any second I was going to die.

A scream left me when I looked down at my hands. Blood began to gush from my nail-beds, dying them crimson. It felt like someone had lit the tips of my fingers on fire, burning like some kind of macabre candles.

I couldn't stand and I couldn't speak. I could only scream and whimper.

Blood flowed faster than I thought possible, coating my palms with sticky red and making my cries louder. My skin started cracking like scorched, parched earth and more blood spilled from my pores. I couldn't stop staring as my body slowly died.

---------

Forsaken and Falling

I call out, screaming into the darkness. I stretch my arms forward, grasping nothingness, but wishing for a familiar presence. I know nobody is there, not close, not anywhere; I can sense the vacancy, but my hope runs away with me, and I shout louder, wanting to pierce the never-ending quiet and blackness, to not feel so alone.

I lose my balance and slowly I begin to fall backward, as if the ground just crumbled away beneath my bare feet. There's no stopping this. Bending back, I take a deep breath before the free fall begins.

I don't know where I'm going, racing headfirst through the pitch blackness like a stray bullet, unable to see the bottom of the canyon. Is this where I die? Where I've finally reached my limit and can take no more? What a pitiful death; to lie crumpled at the bottom of a ravine with no one to ever find you, to ever bring you back home. The casket will be closed and empty while my family weeps and my friends wonder.

I clasp my arms tightly about me, wishing one last time for a comforting embrace. Why couldn't my ending be happy? Somehow I knew it never would be. The realization turned my heart into a stone. I always told myself if I was loyal enough, if I loved enough, I'd get my fairy tale life and the career I continuously strove for.

That's why I can't help but write sad endings, I think as I close my eyes against silent tears, the air that rushed about me whipping them away.

Solid ground quickly came up to meet me.


---

I was half asleep when I wrote these. I'm sure it's easy to tell. Anywho, these are the kinds of things I've been dreaming the past few nights. Perhaps that's why I've felt so gosh darn tired lately.

Dream Within a Dream

 I had a dream two nights ago that seemed to be a dream within a dream, you know, like Inception? The timing of the dream is even stranger once you know that I watched Inception just three nights ago.

I slightly digress. 

I was sitting on the cold hardwood floor with my back facing the French doors that lead out to the deck on the rear of my house. It was pitch black outside, obviously in the ungodly hours of the morning, and for some reason, I was awake and reading. Well, reading early in the morning isn’t the weird part; why was I positioned in front of the French doors? On such an uncomfortable floor, too.

These thoughts didn’t faze me nor did they make me change my mind and start me up the stairs to curl up on my comfy bed and read there instead. I simply kept flipping, page after page, as the night wore on, but it didn’t get any lighter outside.

Suddenly there was a boisterous knock and I jumped to my feet in surprise. The handle turned, but didn’t open, as the doors were locked. Whatever it was on the other side really wanted to get into the house, but couldn’t. I took a quick peek out the windows and didn’t find anyone (or anything) although it was dark outside and I wasn’t in my right mind, so what could I have really seen anyway? Without any more thought, I scrambled away and up the stairs, shutting my bedroom door loudly, perhaps to make me feel better and give me a sense of barrier against whatever was outside the house.

Then the dream shifted and it was broad daylight, hot beams of sun shooting through the windows above the sink in the kitchen as I entered it. My brother and mother were sitting at the island situated in the center of the kitchen and I went to sit down.

“You know, I had the weirdest dream last night,” I murmured, balling my hands together on the green countertop. I had gotten their attention and they stared at me curiously, willing me to continue. I recounted reading in front of the French doors and the abrupt, frightening knocking. They laughed and my mother said something along the lines of, “That movie must have had lots of influence on you. It’s kind of creepy.”

It faded out, dissolving into my subconscious, as I came to. Instantly I knew this was reality, but I was left with such a strange feeling. Had someone been in my head? Or was it just the thoughts about Inception infiltrating and seizing my brain while I was slumbering? The former wasn’t possible, of course, but I still felt odd and somehow elated at “experiencing” a dream within a dream. Then I pondered; what would the purpose of the man (or thing) attempting to get into my house be? Had I made the house something like a bank vault or prison and stored it with valuable information? 

I have no idea. But the only thing I really know is this: Leonardo DiCaprio, if you somehow end up in my head, please don’t sic Mal on me, okay?

Do You Dare Dream a Dream of Me?

She stands tall, elegant and graceful in her black leotard at the very center of the floor. Music begins to play and she leaps and tumbles to the violent tempo, the notes seemingly tossing her about, as if in control. The audience in the bleachers doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, it doesn’t make even a sound. Perhaps that’s because they're lifeless dolls, mannequins that only begged to be freed from their inescapably plastic existences.

No one notices as red water slowly fills the room, coming up the girl’s ankles as she splashes through it, uncaring, or perhaps just utterly oblivious. 

The desperate cry of a baby booms like thunder through the place and the babe writhes on the lap of a still mannequin. There is no one there to calm it, or shush it, so it continues to wail for the relief that will never come.

The girl pays no mind and flips high into the air before landing on her knees. Her small body falls backwards into the water, now up to her waist, and she lies still for a breath or two. The music fades out like a dream when you awake and she stands, tall and elegant before the motionless audience. The baby continues to scream and fuss. 

No one notices.

The girl walks neatly off the blue performance floor and into the bathroom. She stops in front of the giant mirror and leans her elbows onto a counter made of liquid fire. Her skin blisters, cracks, and peels under the heat’s intensity, but she doesn’t cry out in pain even as the fire boils and sloughs the skin and muscle off her, leaving only bone. The water, up to her shoulders now, gives no mollification, no healing.

She sees that her face is crowded with innumerable white heads as she scrutinizes herself in the mirror. She poises two sharp nails by one, pinching it until it pops, revealing the shiny, pearl head of a pinning needle. Undistressed, she pulls the two inch needle from her face and examines it like a foreign object. Blood begins to drip down from the hole it left. Again and again, she pops the needles from her head and lets them fall down into the flaming liquid until not a trace of them remains. She’s weeping blood now.

The water is way beyond her head, but all the same, she walks back out to the performance floor and finds the bleachers empty, all but for the skeleton of a small infant. 

Where have they gone, she wonders, as her gaze pulls down to her chest to reveal a gaping crater of missing muscle and skin. Five left ribs are snapped off, leaving splintered edges, and a number of unattached arteries hang down like bloody threads over her stomach. 

And where, she wonders, is my heart?