ErikaJwrites

I know it has been a while since I last updated everything, but I have been extra busy with university and now working weekends which has sucked my energy when I’m not using it to focus on my studies. This semester, though, I have retaken my Intro to Poetry class and I have a poem to share with you people! It’s something I did for workshop and I’m hoping you guys like it as much as I did while writing it. It’s something different from my normal brooding, emo poetry that I normally write so it isn’t going to fit in my final portfolio that is due later this week. Without further ado, here’s the poem!

So, everyone knows i’m participating in camp nanowrimo from my last two recent posts, but i haven’t been able to do much this time. My mental health has gone and crashed into a new low, but I’m fighting as hard as i can.

i’m also doing a lot of reading in the genre aspects in which my camp project falls under—almost, but not quite—so i can try and see how i can add the romance aspect to the story that’s supposed to be there. two of the stories i’m reading are “the ultimate wingman” and “lion’s chain” by luna_vulpes on archive of our own for the Voltron: Legendary Defender fandom. (i am a MAJOR sucker for VLD and it has become my life right now). if any of you are willing to give it a shot, the stories are amazing~ and i’m not exaggerating—most likely under exaggerating by a major degree—and have read lion’s chain twice and the ultimate wingman once so far. they’re the two that gave me the idea of doing a romance sooner than later.

Hey everybody! I remember mentioning in my last post about campnanowrimo that’s starting this weekend, and I thought I’d share with you all my project.

TITLE: Becoming Nirvana

SUMMARY (that may or may not change later):  Nirvana hates his dead name, Eliza/Elizabeth, but he has no choice but to accept it. He tries to come out to his parents as trans male while also liking guys, but not technically for sex, and he’s brought down and yelled at for saying that he’s not what he was born as. With the threat of being kicked out, Nirvana sucks it up and continues to go by his dead name because he doesn’t have enough money to get an apartment. When a neighbor tells his parents that he’s going by something that’s not his birth name like he promised, his parents follow through with their threat and kicks him out. With nowhere to go, Nirvana ends up sleeping in his car for the night near his work, only to be found by his boss, Rhapsody, who not only gives him a place to stay, but friendship and acceptance that Nirvana craves that he never got from his parents.

CHARACTERS: Elizabeth/Eliza “Nirvana” Rivers, Rhapsody Woods, Anton Roberts, Riley Rivers, Karla Summer, Jordan Scott.

MAIN CHARACTERS: Nirvana, Rhapsody, and Jordan Scott

SUPPORTING SIDE CHARACTERS: Anton, Riley--Nirvana’s cousin--, and Karla

Nirvana: This image is what I see Nirvana looking like around the time he starts his transition. I haven’t found a good image to represent the result after he’s transitioned for a while:

Rhapsody: This is the best image that I can find to represent the beauty that my boy is:

And this is the image that represents what I see Jordan Scott being:

To tell the truth about this novel, I had to do a LOT of research to get everything I needed to understand what I’m writing about. I hate sounding fake about things I’m passionate about and it took me nearly a whole month to get everything I needed. Starting with Google searches for what insurance will cover the surgeries, therapy, and HRT, what you have to do so that the insurance will cover everything, the side effects of everything you take (in this case, testosterone, since Nirvana is a male trans), and the many video’s I’ve had to watch to understand how those taking T for this feel during the time they’re on it.

Letting you all know now, I’m not writing this novel to bash trans people. I completely support everything, and I’m hoping with this coming-out story that I’m not misrepresenting anybody in the community.

To let you know more about this novel, as said above, this is a coming-out novel and set around college/university age and Nirvana’s 23 years old. I’ll be writing most of what I had to go through to get Financial Aid to get into college, so that’ll be a personal experience there. On top of that, there’s a major romance sub-plot that can almost be seen as its second genre, because I’m writing a lot of romance in this. The novel includes not only a transgender character, but a non-binary, asexual, aromantic, homoromantic, and bisexual character, so I have a few new things added to this novel that I’ve only touched on in previous works I’ve done.

What I see the word count being for this story... around 150,000 or so words. It’s not going to be a short story, and I’m hoping it can be published in one book. It’s written in 4 or more parts--so far, I have 4 parts planned, but that may change later today. Each part will have at least 6 chapters and at most... 8-10 chapters? (this may change) but right now that’s what it’s looking like. So far, I have 17 chapters planned and I’m in the middle of part 3 of the supposed 4.

It’s been a while since I posted an update for my writing. Well, the only thing that I can say is that things have happened in the... several months I’ve been MIA in my personal life that’s taken over. Either way, I’m back and I’m here to show some updates in what I’ve been doing with my writing!

First! I’m nearly done with my third rewrite for “Broken,” just 5 more chapters and an epilogue and it’s finished! Then I got extreme edits on some chapters that need to be done, probably a few scenes that need to be added, but other than that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for “Broken”!

Second, I’ve started a new project titled “When Your World Falls Apart” that follows six friends; Denahi, Isaac, Karma, Anissa, Tamara, and Phil. Denahi is the up-front character and has been forced to become mute because of a tumor in his larynx. Scar tissue and one of the sides of his larynx has become paralyzed. Denahi cut himself from his circle of friends because he was too afraid to face them, but they’ll have none of it and try to coax him back into the circle.

Third, I’ve been doing some on and off research for finding an agent for “Broken” so that I can try and have the book traditionally published. I don’t know if I will have it traditionally published just yet, but I like to do the research just in case so that I know who to send query letters to once I’ve decided. Self publishing is still on the table as well, but I’ll explain more on it later when the time comes.

Soon! Camp NaNoWriMo for July starts this week and I plan on doing the challenge to see about getting “Broken” finally finished. I have somewhere between 15,000-30,000 ish words to finish before I’m able to say the draft is completed!

Also, I’m going to be parting from you with a small excerpt from draft 3 of “Broken” Chapter 13: Crashing

As Vincent and I head to class, the noises around me turn into static. He’s talking about something when he meets back up with me in the classroom, Starbucks Double Shot in hand. It’s not hard to see that he’s trying to cheer me up by mentioning something mundane and almost useless. Complete, utter nonsense. It’s not until he notices that I’m not moving, or acknowledging he’s even talking, that the static becomes a dull, low volume white noise.

My gaze doesn’t leave my desk, even when the bell rings and class officially starts.

I can’t make out the lecture from the static.

My stomach churns from the breakfast I picked at when my arms wrap around my middle as tightly as possible.

I want to throw up.

My head is hollow, yet so full of white noise and I can’t think straight.

I want someone, something to break the static.

My lungs shudder as I try to force myself to take a calming breath.

I want to go home.

My shoulders slump forward until my heads bangs on the top of my desk.

Hey guys! i’m back with a brand new update because somehow... yesterday’s post got screwed up as I was trying to edit it. I went back to try and fix it and things only got worse so I went and deleted it.

So, I am here to try this again! Today I have for you my music playlist I will be listening to while I’m writing this upcoming November for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) that I have expanded on since yesterday and is now almost 24 hours long instead of the 11 hours it used to be. Below is the link to my playlist and I hope it inspires you guys to create your playlists before November is officially here. There’s only 4 more days left of this month. 4 days to get all your planning done. 4 days to get your playlists done. 4 days to get your snacks, supplies, and other stuff in order so you can rock November and write your 50K!

Hey guys! This is my third update for #Preptober and, again, I seem to have changed my mind for my NaNoWriMo project because Koda’s story has drained me for the time being--stupid wall--which leads me here to tell you about my new, official project!

My inspiration for the twins in my story!--An image I found on Google. I don’t know who the characters actually are or what anime/manga they came from--and their names are Shadow (on the left) and Shade (on the right) Banks. The title for the novel is “Dark Reflections” and about how they were separated when they were too young to remember each other when their parents divorced--quite ugly too.

Shadow lives a happy, normal life with his father, Shane, stepmother, Zoey, and half-sister, Annabelle. Shade lives a life quite the opposite of Shadow, and lives with his mother, Bekha, who treats him like trash.

Right now, I am also in the outlining stage because I’m doing this between both of their POV’s. Also, I will be sharing down below my--very--short synopsis! It sucks, I know, but it’s something for me to put up on NaNo’s novel page. There’s a little secret and I will be able to share with you once I get the outline finished, so for now I hope this sits well with everyone!

“Dark Reflections”:

Shadow, a seventeen year old senior, moves to a new town called Karrington Heights, leaving behind all the friends he made throughout the years. In this new place, he’s timid and unable to act like his usual, eccentric facade until he’s been around some people he meets at the local library that are his age. One day, he decides to explore Karrington Heights a bit and drives around, stopping for lunch at a Starbucks by the neighborhood mall, only to encounter a mirror image of himself, with added circles under the eyes and clear exhaustion on his reflection’s face.

Good afternoon guys! It is officially October, which means it’s four and a half weeks worth of planning our novels for November! Now, I know my last blog consisted of me writing a completely new idea surrounding nature and with a focus on LGBT and all that jazz but I decided that I’m going to turn the idea into my first Dark Fantasy so I can create my own parks, waterfalls, and nature scenes. So, this #NaNoWriMo I’m going to go off of a story I’m rewriting in a draft three titled “Broken” and is something I’ve been working on for about… I think three years now.

Going off of that, I’ll tell you a little bit about “Broken.” It’s a novel about my main character named Dakoda “Koda” Johnson, who is a senior in high school, and not only bullied by almost everyone in his school but he’s a victim of child abuse by the hands of his mother, who has been released from prison on parole two years earlier than he hoped for.

Koda’s design and most of what happens to him in part of the series was inspired by the main character from the anime/manga Tokyo Ghoul’s Ken Kaneki. His mother, the one that abused Koda, was inspired by two villains in the same series known as Rize Kamishiro and Yamori, who goes by “Jason.” Koda’s best friend, Vincent Skye, is based off of Ken’s best friend Nagachika Hideyoshi, who goes by Hide.

The image that does Koda best would be this:

Now on to my playlist for this novel. I never have a set playlist for any writing I do, but for right now my obsession is K-Pop artists Han Donggeun and Infinite. The whole album “Your Diary” by Han Donggeun is downright amazing and so is his voice. I may not understand everything said because it’s Korean, but I know it’s a lot of sappy love songs.

For Infinite, I listen to a range of songs called “The Eye”, “Be Mine”, “Nothing’s Over”, and others that they have done but those are the three that I own through iTunes that I can actually find. In the image below, from left to right, they’re L, Dongwoo, Sunggyu, Hoya, Sungyeol, Woohyun, and Sungjong (I believe, I sometimes get Sunggyu, L, and Sungyeol mixed).

For the #Preptober part of all this, I’m hoping to finish chapters 10-14 that I have to physically rewrite, edit, and rearrange before November where I plan to finish the last 8 chapters with 50,000 words because I have to add those chapters with nothing to help from the last rewrite. I’m hoping to get this rewrite officially done by the end of November so I can rewrite book 2 “Shattered” and finally be able to work on books 3 and 4.

Hello guys! I am back with a new update and today I will be talking about the novel I am planning for NaNoWriMo that is just over one month away. Down below I have some images--and pardon the horrible phone camera, it is the best I can do--of the journal/notebook I will be using.

This is how I am organizing this amazing journal. To give a heads up as to what kind it is, I actually did not take note on what brand it is when I picked it up last week... I just know it is a 3-in-1 journal that I got from Walmart for a pretty good price. The first section is lined pages, second is graph paper, and the last section is sketch paper.

When I first got this journal, all I did was write down some character notes and some ideas for scenes without organizing. So, as of today, I took the time to organize and rewrite what I scribbled down this past week and made it into a more organized thinking process. I also watched many Boho Berry bullet journal videos on YouTube today while working on homework for my online class. They gave me some ideas on how I should organize my stuff better.

Now, as for the novel itself, I have it being about two childhood friends, Rhapsody and Nirvana, who have known each other since they were born, having to share the same birthday and have been inseparable since then.

As for what all I have planned for this novel so far, the image below will explain: