I'm READY for Camp NaNoWriMo! ...I think...

Okay, went off on a tangent with the previous post. A few of my students point this out to me. Good thing I'm in a lab and not a classroom. I think I would serve better to be a lecturer and do a few workshops. However, gotta concentrate on the short stories and comic ideas I feel more confident in working on. Also, I have three submissions in the pipeline now and the suspense is killing me while I try to distract myself with other projects. Below are some of my new goals for 2019.

These aren't all of them. I can still keep some stuff private.

No more chasing fellowships (won't turn down a recommendation or if someone sponsors me, though!)
No more seeking pro-blogging jobs (unless invited and I have other deadlines cleared)
Putting the canine historical on the backburner (for now)
Returning to feline epic fantasy
Drafting updated science fiction series
Returning to comic stories
Returning to more illustrations within the speculative genre

Right now, I'm putting energy into Camp for April 2019. My account still works and I have new equipment and a new vision. I'm so glad to my readers who have stayed with me and I appreciate you who have been with me on this journey.

Let's rock 2019! Or, at least, skip pebbles. :)

Oh, and I promised the official link to Camp NaNoWriMo.
Here it is: http://campnanowrimo.org/

My main characters - In color pencils

Remember I had to give my female protagonist a new look? Well, I did some months ago. Now, I wanted to take her look up a notch. 

Stacey

Here is Stacey done in that painterly style trendy during the late '20s and early '30s. 

Castellano

Back to my favorite medium - color pencils - and Prismacolor, one of my favorite art companies. I used no graphite pencils, no inking. Just a soft light use of color pencil for sketching and outline.

Here is Castellano also done in the same style. Both characters are now available on  CopperSphinx on Deviant ART ! 

*Both edited & cleaned up by the use of PhotoShop Elements on my Deviant Art profile page*

I continue to plug away

Currently using my novel draft as my project for the duration of this MFA program.

The previous packet involved a difficult subplot that, had I not pushed through it, would not have made sense to work on the rest of the book.

It involved the female protagonist's early months in Harlem, thrown into the middle of all the music, politics, sex, bootlegging, gangster-tied and gangster-owned businesses, legit and illegitimate, and how she is trying to survive her time just to live in a decent apartment. Her fight to live her life as comfortably as possible 'morally compromises her' (mentor's words, not mine) and forces her into things she would not have done had she still been home in rural Tennessee. However, she is smart and capable, and though naive and not as worldly as her counterparts, she easily wades into the corruption that threatens to drown her.

When I first came up with the idea for this novel, I never dreamed nor expected it to grow in the ways it has. Each term grows stronger with my confidence to this book. It has stretched my writing muscles and my research skills. When I run up against a wall, I am able to bounce back in quicker than before. Now that I got through this chapter, -- my mentor enjoyed it, loved the new character I introduced who will serve for most of the book, but was pleased that I strengthened my female protagonist to the point she blazes across the pages -- and with only structural and transitional issues to go over and edit, I think I got off easy.

Last month, and even in July, I did not think I would pull this chapter off. Even before the day of the deadline, when I sent it in, I was lamenting that it wouldn't fly: it was rough and coarse. Shoddy, it wasn't my best work. But it did work. And according to those in my life that know this story from its inception until now, structure issues are easier to deal with than the idea and imagination used. In other words, the fundamental core of the story is left intact and my feedback included adjectives on how I handled scenes and description, which are some of my strengths. Now, to work more on transition and structure. And get my tools ready for the next chapter, and more on that third-term essay!

If you feel this is for you, then do that MFA. But, also look for the right one for you, even if it takes a while. Like I did.

"Back to the meat grinder!"

The above is a favorite paraphrase from the youngest of my older brothers.

[It's from a 1959 war movie called "Pork Chop Hill" and the actual quote is said by a Chinese propagandist telling the American soldiers, "Welcome to the meat grinder!"]  

Now that all my assignments are done, for a few days, I found myself adrift... Ideas were bombarding me left and right, and I couldn't make heads or tails what to do with them. I was so confused. So far off the high of creating so many things, doing so much research and compiling things together that I couldn't focus or stand the creative process still taking its time with me.

Now, I am not saying that the Muses left me high and dry. The opposite! They continued to stay and whisper to me. The ideas came in dreams, in bursts and in gallons of fuel-edged visions I couldn't keep up with. Stories that I had not thought about in weeks or months, couldn't remember, was coming up with answers and solutions to some of the more difficult subplots and weirds ideas I would never, in a million years, have considered.

So that I don't bore you with the plethora (I love this word) of examples, I will say that the novel draft had not been left behind because of this. Moreso, there have been subplots I really did not want to delve into because they were just so hard to solve. But now, I have the impetus (a word from my grandma, RIP) to tackle the task of writing those scenes.

For practice in the coming months of further working on the story, I'm working on the various female voices, especially the main secondary characters. I don't want them all to sound the same, of course, and each is crucial to my main male character.

I put the name of the character on top of the page, and then I do two paragraphs: one when she is talking about herself, the other when she talks about 'Slash' Castellano.
It's a start, but this may unearth gold for future chapters that will help the body of the story.