I have not written since my last post. I meant to write a thousand words a day but there has been no time. There is no time because I haven't been making it a priority. I am doing everything I can not to have to write because it doesn't feel very appealing anymore.
I am not enjoying Scrivener, even with my limited approach at using the bare minimum of its gadgets. Since I have been doing so well before using it I am going to stop and see if that helps. This way of editing is not working for me. Having all these special features is only distracting me and I need to focus on what is really important for me. Others have found this program very useful but I need comfort and ease when I am writing and this program feels foreign and different.
Instead I am making a chart with Word and I will write a short synopsis for each chapter in it and what I need to change. Essentially any notes I need to view later while I am editing. I will see how this turns out. Hopefully it will get me to really look at my story and make me more excited to keep writing.
I am also not going to set myself writing goals. I thought that making a deadline would improve my dedication but instead it only makes me more nervous when I haven't met them. I was able to write perfectly fine before so I'm going to try that again.
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I find naming characters and places in my book to be the most challenging thing in the entire process. Well, that isn't entirely true but it is definitely up there in difficulty. The first thing that readers are going to see is the title and the names of the characters on the inside flap. Not only do they have to sound bad ass and gripping, but also plausible and easy to pronounce.
In fantasy I have to invent names for everything. When I first started I was so tempted to just write them all as "character 1", "character 2", etc. but as soon as there gets to be more than four characters it really starts to get confusing. I had to find another solution.
Thankfully there are many online baby name generators. I drew a lot of my inspiration for my setting from Scotland so I searched Scottish baby names. Sometimes I combine the first syllable of one name with the last syllable of another to come up with something different. I try to make all the characters' names start with different letters because I don't need another reason to confuse them.
Titles will always be the bane of my existence. I hate them. They are hard. But putting off naming it will only make it harder in the long run because suddenly nothing sounds perfect anymore and you will always wonder whether there was something better that could have come along. Instead I prefer sticking with something that makes sense and changing it later on if I come up with something better.
I came up with the title Kingdom of Sand because so many fantasy novels have the word "King", "Queen", "Hero", or some variation of it and why would I want to stand out from the crowd? I considered at one point making my main character's name the title but somehow "Saehan" just doesn't pack the same punch. It might also be hard to remember or spell.
So I just took a bunch of words that corresponded with my novel, they can be physical attributes, things that happen, or themes, and just paired them up with each other until I found something that sounded interesting and went with that. Also, I searched online any potential title I had to make sure that there wasn't already a book by the same name, or a movie. If there is, it will be difficult for readers to find my book when it is published so coming up with something unique will make it more accessible.
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