Writing Challenge: Love Your Novel - February 2019

Oh, no! Not another challenge! Yep, another challenge piqued my interest. The Love Your Novel writing challenge runs through February and I thought I'd use it to keep up motivation for making my current WIP the best it can be.

You may notice Day 5 is conspicuously absent. The challenge for that day was to write 100 words of your novel or if it was written, to read 1000 words of it. I didn't get a chance to do either. Tuesday I was busy working on blog things and my schedule was packed with non-writerly issues needing my attention. Maybe I'll catch the next one like this. There are two more which require writing or editing for your novel.

1. Two younglings overcoming trials and finding purpose.
2. My writing genre is 'fantasy'. Though in most cases it could be classified as YA, I'm going to refrain from labeling my books as such because they end up in the children's section of the library. I remember being a teen and not finding a whole lot of books I was interested in within the children's section of the library. Besides, that, I don't think the whole series will fit the YA label and I'd really like them to be put in one place together.
3. My first book inspired this novel and the successive ones. When I started out, I wanted to create novels written in the same universe, but not necessarily having them all connect. That changed somewhere along the way. But I do know I don't want a trilogy. I've already got four books and I'm hoping to bump that up to six in the future.
4. I have two protagonists. Zek (his name spelling is different now) is a quiet person, a thinker, meticulous, a dream-seer, careful, and an emissary. Liha is sunny, optimistic, eager, loyal, honest, and determined.
5. No Post - See above.
6. The title of this book is Over Land & Under Stone. I sometimes call it OLUS to save time.
   
7. I do use a pen name - Robin McElveen. I had to choose something I'd actually remember to answer to. I have been known to answer to anything that wasn't derogatory, but yanno...
8. This book was intended to be second in a series, but I've pushed it back to the third book. I felt it didn't quite fit right in the timeline. I may push it back even further. I just have to see how the timelines pan out. If you remember, I didn't plan this as a series at first. This means I have to be careful to watch little details and make sure everything lines up. Having only one book in the series published helps, at least. I just need to make each successive book line up with the events in that one.
   
9. I created a world with five moons. They're described pretty well and they play a bigger role in this book than in the others. Finding 'moons' which fit my descriptions was difficult. I decided to create my own picture of the moons. I used Gimp and to make it match the rest of the photos in this challenge, I edited it with Portra, a watercolor effect photo app, which you can get here at APK. They no longer offer it through the Google Play Store. I think that's because they may have refused to put ads in the app. I just know there are no ads in the app and I'm grateful for it.
10. I do make my own book covers. I tried using Canva before, but the free items just weren't cutting it for a fantasy novel cover. To date, this cover is by far my favorite, and I feel really shows the genre more than the cover for Ripples did. I always use Gimp to make my covers and pull elements from open source places which allow you to use the pictures commercially without having to credit anyone. It's cool to credit them, still, though. I didn't for my first book. But I will be doing that from now on, even though I don't have to. It's a good way to get those folks some well-deserved recognition.
    
11. OLUS should be able to stand alone. Whatever the characters deal with in this book, they should get all the closure they need. However, the overarching plot won't be solved by the end. I should be heavily hinting at the arch-antagonist by the time I publish this book.
    
12. My best quality as a writer is my joy in organizing things and filling in blanks. I love workbooks and my novel and world binders are a great source of comfort for me. I know I can turn to them to find little details and remind myself how things are set up. I know which details to find where because my binders are all labeled and sectioned clearly.
    
13. For OLUS, I didn't have an outline. There was no plan. Oh, my! I will never, ever, EVER do that to myself again. It was so hard to write. I won Nano that year, but argh! It was difficult.
14. My husband is my biggest supporter and I do my best to be his. If you enjoy storm photography and filmography, you should check out his website. He also enjoys creating time lapse videos and taking landscape photos, mostly of sunrises or sunsets.
    
15. We had to tag three people we wanted to read our book. I didn't really know what I was going to do for this one. I think I probably tagged my mom, my sister, and I don't know who I would've tagged as the third person.
    
16. We had to write 250 words. I wrote 374. That's a super slow day for me. I normally write around 2k a day when I'm writing a rough draft. I can push myself and write up to 5k, but that's not a usual thing for me. I have too many other things to do on a normal day to devote that much time to writing.
17. One of my favorite antagonists in my series is Ibin Etina. She's a beautiful assassin who is deadly, determined, and highly skilled. She has to be. She jumped guilds to get where she is now and while assassins are highly respected, because she is working with a guild neither of her parents belong to, she's had to work twice as hard to earn the respect of her fellow guild members and her clients. Ibin's portrait inspiration is so spot on, especially after I changed it to black and white. She's white, which is unusual for a Genzetti living in the caverns. Most of them are darker colors. This is another demerit she has to deal with.
    
18. I would like to see Zek and Liha end up together at some point. They are far apart in age, though, and when they first meet, she's still pretty young. This picture is one of my favorites, btw...
19. The book is written in third person, omniscient POV, which is different from book 1, which was written in third person, limited. I like this change because then I can see more of what's going on in the other characters and how they view events surrounding them.
20. Casting my characters is always fun, but I find it also to be a great time waster. I can't tell you how much of the day I spent filling up this Pinterest board...
21. Life and growing up can be difficult. Master Tor Gervell is one of my favorite characters because he's been through some trials and he is willing to share what he knows, especially to Liha, his ward. At one point in the story, he tells her this:
    

    "Hali.” No response. “Hali!” he rasped and tightened his grip on her shoulder again. Liha refocused on Tor. “Hali, I will take care of you. You are my first priority above all. I also gave my word to deliver Ise to the mountain shrine safely and I must do that. Once it’s done, neither of us can stay there. I have work to do back in my home and Haya Ne will be missing you.”
         “But he’s my friend, A’ada,” she whispered brokenly, “my only friend.” A single tear rolled down one pale gold cheek.
         “I know, ulu’U. I’m so sorry. But since you know what lies ahead on this path, you should walk it well. Enjoy the time you have with him now so that when we must leave, you will have happy memories to carry home with you. We can’t avoid separations in life. But we can make the most of what we have this dawning." 
    

22. Tense of Novel - Past Tense
23. Name a published author & their novel that inspired you. I went with Tolkien and The Hobbit because I feel this one most closely resembles what I'm trying to do with the Children of Y'Dahnndrya series.
24. Give us six words describing a side character. I chose Guardian Zim Haya Ne because I hardly ever talk about her and I absolutely /love/ her name. It just rolled off my tongue one day while I was writing book one...in which she does not appear. And at first, I sort of thought of her as a man. I think she's much better as a woman, though.
25. Write a tagline for your book. I shared my tagline early so I shared a favorite quote I rediscovered while prepping day 24's description of Zim Haya Ne. I'll share more of the snippet below so you can see the context a little better. I think it still needs refining, though.
26. Name a novel that this challenge has interested you in reading. There are more than one. And really, there are more than three I'd like to try reading. But I stopped with the three that seem most interesting to me.

• "Reflections: Ravens of Darkness" by Elle Preston.
• "The White Thief" by G. William Netherby
• "Morphogenesis" by Miriam Glass
  

    27. Write 500 words or read 5000 words of your WIP if it's already done. I ended up having to read   

           through five chapters, rather than three as I first thought, in order to meet the 5000 word goal. In

           the end, I read 7000+ so I think that's pretty good for a day's work.
    28. What's your final word count or page count? I chose to share both. Final Word Count: 68,277;

           Final Page Count: 317 (word doc). Now I really know I've got lots of work to do. I should be

           somewhere around 500 pages printed out for the type of novel I'm writing. But it's getting there.

I hope you've enjoyed my posts for this writing challenge. Join me next Friday for the next challenge review. And now for the promised snippet.

Tor growled low in his throat. “Don’t lump us all together. Tanderali traditions run deep. And ever since the Sekot Mundei gained a foothold in our clan, people who show any kind of deviation from the perceived norms started disappearing. Besides,” he continued, “Zec and I are moving on in a few dawnings. You know how the Divini’I are about gifts of Andurdrao. Any babes born showing any kind of abnormalities, from physical deformities to strange abilities, are seen as a threat. They’re either abandoned, murdered outright, or offered up as sacrifices. I must get him to Bal Shif for proper training before anyone can gain proof of his gift.” He sighed and hung his head. “The Guild is too busy seeing to the normal running of things. I doubt they see the truth of what’s going on before it’s too late to do anything about it.”
     The Guardian snorted and threw her hands up in disgust. “Make them see! Are you not part of that illustrious council?” She interrupted Tor’s negative retort by jabbing a finger at him. “You are a Master Carver. You are a well-known and successful guide. These are positions of honor. Why not use them to turn their hearts back to the true Creator’s ways?”
     “You don’t understand, Guardian. I cannot. But for these younglings under my protection, I would. If it was only my life in the balance, I wouldn’t hesitate.”
     She nodded slowly. “I see. But there is one thing you misunderstand, Tor. There is no revolution in which only one life hangs in the balance.”

I enjoyed doing this. I hope you enjoyed the detailed article about casting my characters. Doing these projects may waste some time, but it's interesting to see how much work would go into casting a TV show or a movie. So many factors are involved and while they can adjust for height and build with CG, it's still an intense process.

Here's the slideshow of all the pictures from the challenge. Enjoy!