Almost Time for NaNo!

It's that time of year again, when thousands of aspiring novelists gather together their hoard of snack foods and energy drinks, find a quiet place, crack their knuckles, and hunker down to hammer out 50,000 words in 30 days.

It's time... for NaNo!

National Novel Writing Month (better known as NaNo or NaNoWriMo) starts promptly at midnight on Halloween night and lasts until midnight on November 30th. At the website, you can sign up to be part of a community of other NaNoers where you can share your trials and tribulations, your successes and breakthroughs, your surprises and wrong turns, and find inspiration and encouragement from hundreds of other writers just like you. It gives people an excuse to write every day, and for those of us who need the extra motivation, a deadline and a daily goal (1667 words a say, if you want to hit 50K on November 30th itself).

I've done NaNo twice before, in 2006 and 2007, and I'm proud to say I won both years. Here are a few things I learned that new NaNoers (and even some veterans) might want to keep in mind:

• Pick a schedule and keep to it. In past years, the schedule that worked out best for me was doing my NaNo-related stuff when I got up. I'd read through the day before's work as I ate breakfast and woke up a little more, then dive in for the next 1667 words. TV stayed off, no checking of email, deviantArt, blogs or forums, and certainly no IMing until I reached my daily goal. After the first week, my family learned to leave me alone during that time, which was a major help right there.


• Keep track of your progress. I made myself a spreadsheet to keep track of mine, including day, how many words I should have, and how many I actually had. If I was ahead of schedule, my actual count was done in green. Red, if I was behind. Kind of the whole "do your homework and get a sticker" idea. It seemed to work for me.


• If the spirit moves you, run with it! If you hit your daily goal and the story's flowing and you don't have anywhere else to be, go with it! Keep writing! Whenever possible, you want to get ahead of schedule. After all, you never know when something's going to come up that'll cut into your writing time. (Thanksgiving and weekends tend to be the big ones for me)


• If it makes your feel better, plot it out. For my first NaNo, I dutifully plotted out my story, convinced that I'd get stuck somewhere along the way and be completely lost and suddenly I'd be 30,000 words behind. I have to say, having it plotted was kind of nice (I used about half the steps of the Snowflake Method for the outline), and it definitely made the whole experience go smoothly. Ideally, this should be done in October, before you start, but you can always take a little time once you get a better idea of where your story's going and do some planning then.


• Winging it's fine, too. Some people like to be surprised, to stick a group of characters together and let them work their own way out. If that's the way you work best, go for it! For my second NaNo, I spent October planning on one story and ended up doing a completely different one on November 1st. Fortunately, it was one I'd been thinking about for awhile, so I had some idea of the characters and major plot points (my preferred way of working - I like to know where I'm going, but have a little room to play along the line).


• This is a first draft. No one, I repeat, no one ever has a perfect first draft. It's okay if your prose is rusty, your analogies cliche, and your dialogue stiff - the whole point is to get something done so you can work with it later!


• Save the editing for December. Or, better yet, give yourself a month off after you finish your manuscript and look at it then. The last thing you want to do in NaNo is get bogged down in endless rewrites. I only ever look back as far as the day before. As I read through, I might do some minor editing and what not, but other than that, it's plowing ahead. I also keep a list of changes I'll want to make after November's done, but that all gets saved until after I've got my 50K nice and secure. Besides, a little distance is a good thing when polishing a piece - it helps you see that what you thought were sparkling gems of wit and beauty are actually worn out and kinda cheesy.


• Visit the forums. Half the fun of NaNo is the community. If you get stuck, need a break, or want some people to commiserate with, the forums are the place to do it! Just remember to get your writing done, too.

Ultimately, this is supposed to be a fun, enjoyable experience. Of course, writers as a group tend to enjoy suffering through the process, so ideas of "fun" may vary. ;)

Here's to a good NaNo, everyone!

The Meaning of Halloween

I love the Halloween season. Sure, my trick-or-treating years are long since passed and there isn't exactly a load of party invites in my inbox, but there are plenty of great things still - a month's worth of horror movies, an open bowl of all my favorite fun-sized candy bars in the kitchen, and the chance to draw some of my characters in ridiculous outfits.

Of course, one of my favorite things is doing the Strawberry Syrup Halloween splash page. I know, I know, it breaks up the comic and I've already had enough filler this year, but it's Halloween. Halloween, and a webcomic about vampires and weredogs. I'm practically required to do something for it.

In 2007, I did a nice little role reversal between Hunter and Sammy - Sammy van Helsing and Count Huntula. For 2008, it was a flash to the past with Missy and Hunter's adventures in trick-or-treating. And for this year...

Ferdy, as the Headless Horseman. Which was a fantastically fun piece to do, and probably the happiest Headless Horseman you'll ever see.

Obviously, a little late to add it to the store - I believe Halloween merchandise is supposed to go up in late September - but it'll be there for next year... once I figure out what I'm doing with the Strawberry Syrup shop, anyway. I still haven't decided if I'm going to keep it as just a category or give it its very own shop now that I'm moving to Zazzle. It's nice to have the option.

Speaking of timing, the passing of Halloween means one more thing: time to start getting those Christmas designs up and ready for sale! I'd better get busy...

What's in a Name?

I often see journals by other people on deviantArt asking why people chose their user name. The answers always seem to fall into one of a few categories: 1) Nickname from people in their real life, 2) Some variation on their actual name (usually among the "serious" artists and photographers), 3) Some cool or clever mishmash of words, 4) Something poached from another language, or 5) Something they're a fan of, whether it's their favorite TV show, anime character, actor, animal, career, region, etc. Whatever they choose, it has the potential to become a whole new identity, and more often than not, there's some sort of story behind it.

As you might have gathered, I am known on the internet mostly as Kitsune64, usually shortened to just Kit. To be honest, by now it seems strange to me when someone IMs me and uses my actual name. But where did Kit come from?

Well, waaaaay back when I was a senior in high school, a friend got me involved in a message board RPG. Of course, I needed a handle, something for the other players to refer to me by. At the time, I wanted something ambiguous, that I actually liked, and that meant something to me.

Now, I have a natural love of mythology, folklore, and wild canines. For awhile, I considered Coyote, as I do so love our native trickster, but then I decided to see what I could find in Japanese folklore, since the RPG was an anime-based one and it seemed fitting. You can probably imagine my glee when I stumbled upon the kitsune - a trickster fox that took any number of forms in its many stories, from the beautiful woman to the wandering monk (this is long before Naruto hit the U.S.). Besides, it shortened into a nickname much better than Coyote (Coyo? Yot? Yeah, not the most appealing, there). I had my new name.

As for the 64... Once upon a time, before gmail came along, I wanted my own personal email address. Hotmail said I could have the name I wanted (not Kitsune, btw - this predated that by YEARS) if only I'd choose a number to stick after it. And they ever-so-helpfully gave me three options: 63, 64, or 65. Since the big gaming system in the house at the time was the Nintendo64, I figured that would be easiest to remember, and it's been with me ever since.

So, there you have it - how Kit came to be. And nearly ten years later, I'm still happy to call it mine.

Introduction

Hi there! I'm Kit, aka A. M. Meyer, and humble owner of this little blog. Which, considering this is the first post, is a very little blog. But, I'm sure it will grow!

So, what possessed me to start another blog? After all, I've had blogs before, and my posting habits could be described as sporadic at best. However, I have high hopes for this one. You see, I'm involved in several different things in the digital domain:

• Digital art. I'm a digital artist over on deviantArt, where I post my sketches and finished works, but this would be a great place to post my WIPs.


• Crafting. Okay, okay, so crafting itself isn't a digital pursuit, but where I sell it is! My craft of choice is decoupage, and I sell my decoupaged boxes on Etsy with my sister-in-law. Here, I can mention when I have a new box for sale.


• Squidoo. I'm a Squidooer, with a handful of lenses that I update regularly and will probably talk about on here at some point.


• Webcomics. I have a weekly webcomic, Strawberry Syrup, about a half-vampire and the poor misguided boy who hunts him.


• And most recently, I've opened a Zazzle store, where I can sell my designs on everything from t-shirts to key chains.

In fact, the Zazzle shop is what made me think it might be a good idea to start a new blog. I've got a lot of work ahead of me, and this seems like a great place to talk about new designs and promote a few of my fellow Zazzlers while I'm at it.

So, there you have it: my intents and purposes for this here blog. I hope you enjoy tracking my progress, and here's to a brand new blog!