For those curious about my NaNoWriMo’09 production, here it is…I hope you like it!
Aline Martins
Synopsis: Where do dreams go?
Jenny is still upset about loosing the best storyteller she ever met, her grandma.
To make things even more difficult, they are moving to her Grandma’s old house, at least -she thinks – she might find someone to tell her grandma’s stories.
But she has no idea what kind of friends are waiting for her in a house where the doors are as huge as giants and the rooms always lead to magical places.
And for my curious friends!
Excerpt
When she got the key, she looked around, and the only thing she thought about was picking inside the room once more. “One more time” she thought “just one more time”.
And she opened the door.
“Granny?” Jenny murmured, taking in shallow grasps of the cold air.
“Do you want to play with Granny?” A said a soft voice with glee.
Jenny stepped inside the room, closing the door slowly at her back. “I won’t take long, and nothing can happen” she thought.
Suddenly, other voices joined the first one, all of them whispering at the same time,
“Jenny, we know you are here, we know you are here”.
“Who are you?” asked Jenny choking, this couldn’t be a joke.
“Jenny, my darling” said a very familiar voice.
“Granny?” asked Jenny.
“Did you come to hear new stories Jenny?” the other voices joined what seemed to be her grandmother’s voice.
Terrified, she tried to run away, but she tripped over something and fell to her knees.
“You’ll never get out of here Jenny,” said one of the voices.
“This is where they send you when they don’t need you anymore” another voice said.
“You don’t want us anymore Jenny, you put us here to forget us, but we want you”, they said in unison.
Jenny thought she could feel cold hands around her wrists, holding her, while she could hear her granny’s voice behind all the others, and it said “be careful, my dear, you should not enter the fairyland without following the instructions”.
The other voices were still around her saying “We want to play, we want to play”.
“Granny?” Jenny shook all over trying to get rid of the cold and the fear that was making her choke as if all the objects in the room had their hands and fingers on her.
But, just when Jenny became convinced life was over, and there was nothing else she could do, a whirlwind escalated and suddenly disappeared.
Jenny was confused, she could not figure out where she was, or if she was standing, floating or lying on the floor, all she could feel were the cold and the weight of the silver key on her hand. She closed her eyes for a while, trying to forget, only listening to the sound of her heart.
When she opened her eyes and looked around, she was not in the attic anymore, but in her bedroom, lying on her bed, holding something so tightly in her hand,something that was hurting her. The key.
by Aline Martins
Just in case you’ve been wondering where I’ve been, here is a hint Andrea Blythe gives you.
If you want to read my Nano Story, please leave a comment, I will need some beta readers for December.
Aline
As you know (from my previous post), I am taking part in the National Novel Writing Month this year, (more info at http://www.nanowrimo.org/ ), and I am about to hit 7000 words, hopefully 8000 even though I had a horrible Migraine and ended up in hospital this morning.
This is the kind of thing that inspires me more and more.
Bellow is Neil Gaiman’s pep talk to all the WriMos!
(for those who want to read what I am writing, please send me a message)
I’ll leave you with Neil Gaiman now,
Aline
Originally Posted by: Chris Baty on 11/18/2007 at http://www.nanowrimo.org/node/1065561
Dear NaNoWriMo Author,
By now you’re probably ready to give up. You’re past that first fine furious rapture when every character and idea is new and entertaining. You’re not yet at the momentous downhill slide to the end, when words and images tumble out of your head sometimes faster than you can get them down on paper. You’re in the middle, a little past the half-way point. The glamour has faded, the magic has gone, your back hurts from all the typing, your family, friends and random email acquaintances have gone from being encouraging or at least accepting to now complaining that they never see you any more—and that even when they do you’re preoccupied and no fun. You don’t know why you started your novel, you no longer remember why you imagined that anyone would want to read it, and you’re pretty sure that even if you finish it it won’t have been worth the time or energy and every time you stop long enough to compare it to the thing that you had in your head when you began—a glittering, brilliant, wonderful novel, in which every word spits fire and burns, a book as good or better than the best book you ever read—it falls so painfully short that you’re pretty sure that it would be a mercy simply to delete the whole thing.
Welcome to the club.
That’s how novels get written.
You write. That’s the hard bit that nobody sees. You write on the good days and you write on the lousy days. Like a shark, you have to keep moving forward or you die. Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
A dry-stone wall is a lovely thing when you see it bordering a field in the middle of nowhere but becomes more impressive when you realise that it was built without mortar, that the builder needed to choose each interlocking stone and fit it in. Writing is like building a wall. It’s a continual search for the word that will fit in the text, in your mind, on the page. Plot and character and metaphor and style, all these become secondary to the words. The wall-builder erects her wall one rock at a time until she reaches the far end of the field. If she doesn’t build it it won’t be there. So she looks down at her pile of rocks, picks the one that looks like it will best suit her purpose, and puts it in.
The search for the word gets no easier but nobody else is going to write your novel for you.
The last novel I wrote (it was ANANSI BOYS, in case you were wondering) when I got three-quarters of the way through I called my agent. I told her how stupid I felt writing something no-one would ever want to read, how thin the characters were, how pointless the plot. I strongly suggested that I was ready to abandon this book and write something else instead, or perhaps I could abandon the book and take up a new life as a landscape gardener, bank-robber, short-order cook or marine biologist. And instead of sympathising or agreeing with me, or blasting me forward with a wave of enthusiasm—or even arguing with me—she simply said, suspiciously cheerfully, “Oh, you’re at that part of the book, are you?”
I was shocked. “You mean I’ve done this before?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Not really.”
“Oh yes,” she said. “You do this every time you write a novel. But so do all my other clients.”
I didn’t even get to feel unique in my despair.
So I put down the phone and drove down to the coffee house in which I was writing the book, filled my pen and carried on writing.
One word after another.
That’s the only way that novels get written and, short of elves coming in the night and turning your jumbled notes into Chapter Nine, it’s the only way to do it.
So keep on keeping on. Write another word and then another.
Pretty soon you’ll be on the downward slide, and it’s not impossible that soon you’ll be at the end. Good luck…
Neil Gaiman
I have been struggling to write a book for years now, and I can surely say I have ideas for 4 or 5 different ones, in my mind and small pieces of paper scattered around my house. But as I am a perfectionist and a VERY DAMN GOOD procrastinator, it never became real.
Today, while… procrastinating a little bit (for a change.LOL) I received a tweet that called my attention:
National Novel Writing Month 2009
What’s this?
National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
and I though…well, maybe it’s just what I need!
SO, following the NaNoWriMo advice, I am spreading the word I am an official participant, so you can ask me about it during November, so I keep working hard not to feel ashamed I could not accomplish it…LOL
In case you want to add me as a NaNoWriMo buddy, here is my profile:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/544784
Now, HELP ME HERE:
Should I write it in Portuguese or English?
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” John Lennon
It has been a while since I’ve tried to keep a blog, and, inevitably, I always end up abandoning my efforts.
It’s important to recognize which phase of the creative process you’re in. Be fully present while in each step, enjoy it, play with it and revel in your creative gifts.
But, you can also start to notice some common roadblocks or pitfalls that show up when you’re writing.
No matter how well you write, life’s events can temporarily stop your flow of creativity. Creative interruptions are okay, and even more common than you think.
It doesn’t have to be a big event that acts as a distraction, such as a loss, sickness, lack of job, etc. This morning I was feeling totally idealess and scattered. Simply because I was going to do something I didn’t want to do at the moment.
In my case, the interruption was brief. I was back on track in minutes. But sometimes, big life events, may trigger off a huge ebb of creativity. And let’s remember, ebb of creativity, doesn’t mean lack of inspiration.
Even though, both are intimately connected.
- Don’t let interruptions stop you!
The trick, of course, is not to let life’s events stop you completely. The only way to get something written is to either write it you or hire someone to write it. If you’re writing it yourself, you’ve simply got to put words on paper. Most people find they do this best when they stick to a writing schedule.
“Freedom is found along the guiding lines of discipline.” – Yehudi Menuhin
It’s very important to say that, sticking to a writing schedule isn’t the same thing as being a slave to it. That doesn’t work well either.
You are the only one who knows when an interruption in your writing schedule slips from understandable and acceptable to procrastination and, if you let it becomes a writer’s block.
Writing well requires, among other things, self-honesty, patience and practice. There is no easier or softer way. But the main advice is: Don’t give up!
“In order to create, we must take the bad with the good. You are bound to write many bad paragraphs along with the good ones. You can get rid of those bad paragraphs later but first you must write them. Otherwise you won’t write anything.” —Eric Maisel, Taking the Bad with the Good
In fact, writing and publication can be an entirely self-determined activity these days. So, the best you can do is carrying paper and pen with you.
We never know when creativity and inspiration might come.
Aline Writing Martins
PS: A blog´s death is promoted by shortage of comments.
A lot of visitors don´t realize that their comments are VITAL for the blog´s survival.
SAVE OUR BLOG! KEEP IT FED! 
