#max kirin

You know who I haven’t drawn in over two years? Justine.

It’s been too long.

Another fun cover done for M. Kirin, I really love the colors :D!

☢ Buy My Art! ☢

I'll trade you three hat wobbles for that Teletubbie.

☢ Buy My Art! ☢

Okay, I've been going through some of my old files full of really random and older story ideas, world notes, hand drawn maps and so on. So I'm going to list here kind of my process of elimination. I have decided to keep certain things, get rid of certain things, and maybe even just reimagine some other things. Part of my personal issue with some of these stories is that I wrote them when I was a teenager. Not that there's anything wrong with that exactly, just that for me the things that used to be like these huge issues, now seem petty. This is also the reason that I can't read a lot of YA fiction or things like that. Now don't get me wrong, when I was a teenager I adored things like that because the struggles that were talked about the struggles that were explored really spoke to me. But now that I am an adult, I just don't see things the same way. Got off topic there, but it was something that I kinda needed to get out. What follows is the process that I went through to figure out whether or not I should keep these things. I want to put some sort of a disclaimer here somewhere that you know this is just something that I picked up that works for me. I've been watching a lot of videos on YouTube from @maxkirin and they have been really helpful. One of the things that Max advocates in almost every video is to do what works for you so to paraphrase the disclaimer in a lot of Max's videos this is my process, this is what works for me and it's not set in stone. 

 Okay the first thing that I did was – I love using a whiteboard for brainstorming and this kind of stuff and we have one that's like I think it's like 2 feet long and a foot tall and I love it. So the first thing I did was I started writing out my current "main" project because it I know that I want to keep it. This is the one that I'm lavishing most of my time on right now and so I know that this is not one that's gonna be scrapped. I'm definitely keeping it. I wrote a header of kind of the working title for it which is actually what the file is saved under so let's say that it's like Angels Reach (it's not, that's just what came to mind). Under that, I wrote a couple of bullet points of things that I was enjoying about the story. One of the things for my current story is that I am exploring characters who have secrets, are keeping secrets from one another, and maybe even without realizing it are keeping secrets from themselves. And that is one of the things that to me has always always resonated with the story like when I'm reading. So let's just say that that's one of the things under the heading that would be a bullet point. The next bullet point might be something along the lines of this character has issue A. And then underneath issue A I would put like subpoints like things that are related to that issue but that I felt like needed to be written out and I did that for each of the in progress projects that I've been working on. 

 Once I filled up the dry erase board, I transferred everything that I had written about the project on the whiteboard to paper. This is a part of my process that I sometimes feel like it's a waste of time until after I've done it . The reason for that is, that I am writing the same things at least twice and sometimes end up typing this same stuff over again - in this particular case because it's brainstorming I'm not gonna type it . After I finish going from the whiteboard to paper I feel a lot more settled in my decisions especially in this case. What I'm trying to do is basically do some spring cleaning . And one thing that I want to get out of the way now is that I work on multiple projects at once. I have never been able to only write one project at a time because I get burnt out. And I know me and this is one thing that - and it's actually some of Max’s older videos that I've been looking through that have kind of made this resonate within me again because this is something that I realized about myself in middle school - I know me, I know that as I'm writing something if I don't step away from it for a while and start working on something else and then come back to it and feel more fresh about it because of that I get burnt out and I can't continue. It used to drive my English teachers absolutely batty because I would ask them occasionally for work that I knew was going to come weeks in advance so that I could start my brainstorming process for those particular things while I was putting the finishing touches on the current projects . And I know that sounds probably really crazy especially to people who only ever work on one thing at a time, but I learned from a very young age how to multitask and how to do it well and I think that may be part of the reason why I have a hard time bringing myself to work on only one thing at a time. The other thing is that a while back I was running a blog on blogspot and I wrote a post about character creation and how stories come to me, and this again is just like my personal way of doing things so you know it's it's not set in stone. I always get characters first - well almost always. What I mean by that is I'm doing dishes, I'm playing with my daughter, I am making dinner for my family and all of a sudden what what will pop in my head is this character and sometimes it's not the full character like I don't get the full physical like they're standing in front of me but I get bits and pieces . For example about a week ago, I got this idea of a character who is blind and the only other thing that came to me at that point was that the character was female. So there's this blind girl, that's all I really know about her and I'm like well you know come on, tell me more, come on … And for me it's kind of like trying to coax a reluctant animal to come to you because - especially with this particular character that's been kind of floating around back and forth here and there throughout my life I have thought several times about trying to include a blind character in some of my stories but - it's like trying to get a reluctant animal to come to you, in the sense that they don't really want to but they do at the same time. Anyway that's a little bit off the track there I will get back to what I was talking about. The blog post that I wrote talks about how characters don't come fully formed and how my stories are nothing without the characters and that is honestly one thing that I can agree with Max on 100% is that stories without characters or stories where characters are more of a background piece don't resonate as well as when the stories focus on the characters. And one of the other things that I talked about in that particular blog post was that my stories depend on characters. I talked about when I was six and I made up this saw lightning sprite that showed up because when I was a kid I like to watch lightning storms so she showed up at the beginning of the storm and stayed for as long as it last. That was one of the first characters that I can distinctly remember who came to hangout, chatted and then left. I touch in that particular post on how after I get from the character you know are you sticking around or are you just kinda passing through; if I get that they're sticking around I then figure out their personality and from there I can learn more about them and what part of their story they want me to tell and that's actually something that I wrote down in some of these because some of these are not full on stories, but more character concepts. 

 Once I had all of my computer files put down on paper, and that's a total of 10 characters, character concepts, world concepts, or any variation or combination of those things, I added notes on whether to keep them or not. The first one is my main project that I know I'm gonna keep so I put in KEEP; the next one I'm not 100% sure where I want to go with it . I have my main character, some “side characters”, and a couple of over arching plot points. The problem is, I'm not really sure if this is one I want to pursue. At first I did because of a couple of things and then I've changed those things and now it's still an idea that I want to mess with but I'm not sure if I want to fully pursue it to the point of finishing the story. And so I've got scrap? Revamp? A question about whether to keep the main character as the current species or not and then a reminder to myself that if I do keep this then I need to find my world notes which are handwritten even though the story itself is on the computer . I have sort of a mental block when it comes to putting the entirety of a story on the computer. I know this sounds really strange, but I want to have the world notes and things that I can take with me when I go places so that if inspiration happens to strake when I'm out and about I can just jot it down . The other part of the mental block, comes from the thought of what if my computer dies , what if I didn't have it saved on an external memory source, what if… And I tend to get into the "what if" a lot probably because I overthink things, but that's beside the point. So even though all of these 10 stories that I have in this list, in this stage on paper, even though the stories themselves are saved on the computer world notes, character notes, character backstory notes may not be . 

 The last step, which I have not done yet, is going to be to delete some of these files from the computer. One of my character concepts I have this feeling that she's going to be mistaken for a rip off or copy of a similar character that is currently really popular and that's not the case because this particular character has been in my mind off and on since I was seven. So that's why I'm not too sure if I want to pursue that particular story at the current time . And that's the thing that I need to do is I need to put notes as to why I haven't pursued it and like for example this one feels really webby because I have a lot of world building, a ton of characters, a bunch of storylines that were supposed to merge and then separate and come back together and I'm not really sure what to do with it. So that  final step is going to be figuring out which of these I really want to keep and which of them I want to just scrap completely and the ones that I want to scrap completely I will also have to delete off of the computer because that's where they are. In a couple of days I will also be doing this for any of my hand written ones, because when I was in junior high and high school I handwrote everything. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in now I'm not really too sure if it was such a good idea. Now I still do some handwriting and some typing, generally speaking the main story is typed but world notess and things about society like societal rules and stuff like that I might potentially hand write. That being said, I still need to go through my handwritten stories from high school and junior high and get rid of some of them because some of them are just so bad that it's like to look at just the journal that they're in and I shudder.

Some recs today to help you get ready and excited for NaNoWriMo.

If you haven't started planning yet, and don't where to start, I highly recommend Max Kirkin's How to Plan a Novel. A non-proscriptive brainstorming session that helps you get started. It emphasises the importance of finding your enthusiasm, developing and following the characters as opposed to a strict plotline, and gives you some tools and tips that might work for you. It's good to know I'm not the only one who listens to music and imagines music vids/fanvids/trailers of the fiction and characters I'm working with!

Worried about getting all those words written? Rachel Aaron's How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day might be helpful. At that rate you'd complete NaNoWriMo in five days! Seriously though, there is a lot of pre-planning involved and if you're more of a pantser you might not find the process as useful as if you prefer a more coordinated approach. Plus it requires temporary sacrifices – think about how people are describing their preparation for NaNo, such as cleaning the house now because nothing non-essential will not get done during November! The approach that works for Aaron is to step away from the computer and make handwritten notes about what the scene about to written consists of. This is coupled with some research about how you write – when and where do you achieve your best wordcounts? Find out and use that knowledge to plan your writing. Finally, there's a focus on enthusiasm, something echoing Max Kirin's advice. You have to love this story, you have to get excited about it. The words will come more easily if you're in your optimum workspace, knowing what you want to write, and you're excited to do so.

I've seen lots of advice about gearing up for NaNo and things like "talk in the NaNo forums" and "make a playlist" to get you enthused. Amanda McCormick's article NaNoWriMo Tip #5 – Get Hyped! gives five suggestions to get you started.

As I said before, I'm not used to this level of planning and I'm still struggling to pin down some of the details. But some of the characters and scenes are very clear to me and I'm making notes before I forget the details. I'm hoping that keeping these in reserve and not letting myself write them yet will let them grow, ferment, brew, and that, in November, I'll be anxious to write out the full versions of the scenes.

M. Kirin is a very silly person who happens to write serious stories. They live on the West Coast of the U.S. and like to pretend they have a sitcom. Whenever they're not writing, or talking about writing, they're probably blogging about writing.

For writing advice, writer positivity, and more, follow M. Kirin on your social media platform of choice!

✚ Writing Advice Blog: maxkirin.tumblr.com ✚ YouTube Channel: youtube.com/mistrekirin ✚ Twitter: twitter.com/mistrekirin ✚ Writing Playlists: 8tracks.com/mkirin ✚ Instagram: instagram.com/maxkirin ✚ Free Stories: wattpad.com/mkirin