This Title Has Nothing To Do With My Post

So it appears that I just dropped off the face of the earth.

Well, it's okay, because that would probably be true. I have to admit, blogging is not at the top of my priority list. Bad blogger, Rachel! Bad, bad.

That, and I've been having...trouble with my manuscript. I think I've written about four separate drafts for it and nothing seems right. I don't want to give up on it, not at all, but, still. It's a bit disheartening. I know the tale I want to tell, but putting the words on paper is an entirely different story (Haha! See what I did there?).

I think that I should take some time to get reacquainted with my characters and their world, and especially with their story, and see where that takes me. Hopefully somewhere I want to go!

I know that as soon as this comes out of my mouth (or fingers, rather) I'm going to contradict myself because I'm a contrary person, but I'm not going to disappear off the face of the earth again. I want to get into the blogosphere, get myself out there. So we'll just see how it goes, yes?

Lots of characters, but no story?

I find that that’s becoming my issue lately. I have a slew of characters, but every scenario i put them in doesn’t seem a decent fit.

The way things generally go, a character will prance into my head, and I then spend copious amounts of time prying information from said character, whether it be plot, background, relationships, anything like that. And then I try and build a story from it.

And for some reason that I can’t begin to fathom, it just isn’t working this time around.

Has this every happened to anyone? Have you ever solved it? Or are your characters still waiting for a purpose?

Don’t worry, I’m sure things will return to normal shortly

So I’ve recently recovered from a computer crash!  Thankfully, all  my important documents had already been saved and backed up onto an external hard drive, a flash drive, email, and everything else I could possibly think of. So when people tell you to back up your work? They are not lying.

In other news, I’ve downloaded this nifty little program from windows live which should help me keep up with blogging a bit more! It’s called “Windows Live Writer” and it connects to your blog via your desktop. For me, this is a very nice feature. most of the time when I think “Hmmmm, I should blog”, I’m almost always instantly distracted by other things (Like google, facebook, twitter….)

But hopefully, with this nifty little contraption, it should come to an end and you can all kick me in the pants if it doesn’t.

Tonight at midnight I, along with a bunch of other most likely criminally insane individuals will be starting JulNoWriMo, which is exactly what it sounds like, National novel writing month, except in July. Whooopee! We’ll see how far I get with my new project.

What's Fantastic About the Hunger Games?

I really want to know.

I've constantly been hearing about this book/series for about... a year? two years now? And I'm curious. What's the huge appeal? I feel a little suspicious about the hype.

What, in your views, makes this book series so wonderful?

Contest hosted by Abby Stevens!

Located here: http://www.abbystevens.com/2010/05/pink-carnation-of-hands-and-teeth.html

I"ve wanted to read "The Forest of Hands and Teeth" for a while now, and this seems like the perfect (and fun!) opportunity for a free copy!

So go enter! Go go go! Now! Why are you still reading this?

WHAT.

So I realized last night while doing something completely unrelated, that if I approached my novel in a different direction, I could possibly even out a lot of plot holes. This is the good thing! The bad thing?

I'd have to rewrite the entire thing.

Again.

Oh well. This is what revision is for.

Huzzah!

So last night at exactly 10:41, I finished the first draft of my novel "LEGIT". Eeeee! Now. Tweaking to send it off to my dear, darling readers, while simultaneously praying it does not break their brains.