Check out the new digs

Not completely sure what prompted me to sit down and go, “Hey – maybe I should try hosting the blog on my Bluehost account…” but I suspect it had heaps to do with procrastination.

I got down and did it over the week anyhoo, and found me a template I could live with. I think the chief impetus was the new-found flexibility to add a countdown – ironically, so I could sufficiently scare myself into buckling down and getting decent writing done.

As of tonight, I have 1 week and 1 day left to get all my characters and plots in line.

Which doesn’t give me much time to:

• line up the last subplot with the rest of the subplots
• fill up more of the back story for one of my villains
• get the character analyses done for majority of my minor characters.

The week has not been in complete vain, however. Apart from getting an immense sense of satisfaction from pulling together a brand new website WITH MY BARE HANDS, and despite a crazy-long week mired in too much other extra-curricular activities, I’ve managed to polish off two romance novels (I read very quickly) in the name of research.

And as a result, I’ve gotten at least a few other character shades down pat, in my head.

Yes, the idea is to try and be at least halfway original with your storytelling, but as King Solomon has already surmised that there is nothing new under the sun, I see no harm in reading other people’s published work and getting a sense of how to draw a character in your reader’s head.

Some people like every single thing spelt out for them – how the wind catches their characters’ hair, for instance. What colour their teeth is. Other readers are quite happy to bumble along until about 75% through, when they realise that the character in their head has to be revised because his age is revealed – and he’s at least a decade younger than they thought.

I came away from those two books with a much better sense of how much detail I want to give regarding the characters’ looks and background; what they could sound like, how I could artfully paint their idiosyncracies. And even what I don’t want to do; what didn’t work for me as a a reader, and what I would try and avoid. (My characters shall not be drips, crying every chance they get until the beeg, strong man came and wiped their tears away with their manly man-hands. Which was what happened in both books. Which drove me absolutely bananas.)

But tomorrow, I write.