In Honor There Is Hope

I went to nanowrimo.org, clicked on "create novel" and just typed in a title and synopsis. We'll see how I well I follow this, but so far the title of the zombie novel is At the Dawn, and the summary is:

"Cyrus Moore has her world come crashing down when a zombie plague sweeps across the United States--perhaps even the world. With her parents dead, she and her brother travel across the country in the hopes that Cyrus's girlfriend and her family are still alive. Along the way, they pick up a ragtag group of survivors."

Like I said, we'll see how this goes. I think throughout November I'm going to watch zombie movies and shows and read zombie books for inspiration. I hope this goes well.

I only named this At the Dawn because I have nothing else to name it, and it needed a working title. Hopefully, that title will either end up working for it or else I'll find a better title once I go back over it.

I woke up at 5:30AM, got up, dressed, had some toast and went walking with MacKenzi. I had gone walking with MacKenzi and her mom yesterday, but her mom walks too fast for me, and by the time we got back to the house, I was tired, thirsty and starving. Today MacKenzi and I decided to let her mom do her walking while we would go at our own pace. We started at 6:30, and walked a mile in half an hour. When we got back, I was feeling good. I wasn't overly tired, and I wasn't hungry. The toast was a good idea. A really good idea.

I'm going to continue getting up at 5:30AM so I've got plenty of time to eat a small breakfast before walking. I'm also going to get into the habit of working on a project of my choosing for half an hour to an hour after walking (with a shower in between, of course). I figure that'll help me get back into my writing, and once college starts back up again, I can use that time to work on home work or get a head start on major projects (or the research for them). Once I get my course schedule at orientation (on August 31), I'll figure out a second block of time (and perhaps a third or fourth or a 'just in case') for doing homework and projects during the day (or working on a project of my own if I don't have any homework or school projects just too keep me in the proper mindset about those times).

Something I discovered yesterday was this website called ZenHabits which had some really great tips for simplifying and de-stressing your life. One of the things the author talks about is getting rid of clutter--on your desk, on your walls, even on your desktop. He gave a link to some really awesome programs, one of which was Launchy: The Open Source Keystroke Launcher. It's really great because it can open all sorts of programs and documents quickly without having to clutter up the desktop. My desk top is almost completely cleared of anything save the screen saver now, and I love it.

Since he's also a writer, he also gave some links to programs that would make it easier to write--one's were they took up the whole screen and had all the options hidden until you put the cursor where they should be so all there was was a plain screen (with a background image) to write undistracted. The one I downloaded was Creawriter. I've poked around it, but I haven't had a chance to use it yet. It looks really neat, though. I played around with the setting and changed the background image to one of rain hitting puddles of water (which I found on Google), and turned off the ambient nose for now (the cracking of a fire).

Alright, so it's a lot later than I had planned to write it, but it's still morning, and now I've written it. Mission accomplished! I'm making progress already. 

So I was requested to make a Lip Service/The Walking Dead crossover fanfiction. Basically, I'm taking the Lip Service characters and dropping them in a zombie apocalypse, and I'm going to follow the show in broad strokes. There will probably be some 28 Days Later influence in there too. Now what I have to figure out is if I want the story to be about Frankie's personal growth and struggle to survive for the first few chapters or if I want the reader to be as disoriented and confused as Sam is when she first wakes up.
( more musings under cut )

THE FANFICTION LOVE MEME

If any of you guys are interested in it that is. :)

Finally got the banner for winning week #46 at avatar_contestwith my fic Destiny.

Check it!:




It's pretty cool, even if only to remind me that I won something. Still a little conflicted about it being that fic since I was lazy with that fic, and it's no where near what it could have been if I hadn't procrastinated until the last second. But whatever.

I WON. AND GOT A BANNER. BOOYAH!