Clara D Munro

Tag: reading

  • 86 K words completed

    86 K words completed

    Not even halfway through the week and I have already written 6000 words. I definitely feel like I am on a role with my writing right now. Every thousand words brings me one step closer to my goal of 120K words.

    Every book I wrote before this was only 50K and then my inspiration burned up. I didn’t know how to get past it. This time, I took it slower to start with and I took breaks.

    I take weekends off from writing. I only write Sunday- Thursday and then I take Friday and Saturday off. I keep it in line with my job which is the same days. I only work until I finish the scene that I am writing.

    At 8pm, I turn off my phone for the night. Then I start my wind down for the night. I’ll either watch something or just read a book. I have read 10 books this year so far.

    I know that once the first draft of this book is done, the real hard work starts. I know that I have lots to edit and re-write already but I am not going to focus on that until I have completed the rough draft.

    I am writing the book I would want to read. Everything about this book is informed by that desire. I am telling stories about characters I want to know more about and every page that I write, I learn more about them. I love this process and I am happy to be on this path and writing this book.

  • 75K Words Completed

    75K Words Completed

    The novel is coming right along now. I hit 75K words today and the new start to the story is working much better. I have had to scrap only about 5K words so far and I have added so much more since.

    With only 45K left to go in my 120K word goal, I feel like I am over the hill of the hardest part and now it’s just a matter if letting the rest settle in.

    I have about 10K written at the end of the story which might get moved into book two. I have three books planned for this story.

    Of course, I also got inspiration for a whole new story this week and I have been making notes about it on the side as I work on the main project. The thing about creating your world world to write in allows for you to pretty much create endless stories to go along with it.

    One of the hardest parts of the process so far was the world building. I have a vague framework when I started writing and lot of what I wrote in the first half of the book was defining the world and its rules. Now that I have those settled enough, I can use them to dig into the story.

    One of the things I need to create soon is a map of Tierra (that’s the name I gave to The Otherworld). When I first started writing, I thought maybe Tierra would be a parallel universe Earth but as I started expanding the story, the world changed into its own planet.

    I can share a bit of the creation myth with you since it won’t give away any hints about the story:

    In the beginning, there was only the Void.

    Thoughtless and endless in its expanse.

    There were no stars and no planets.

    Life did not yet exist.

    Then a stirring began deep within the Void.

    The first to emerge was the Goddess Danu, The Mother of the Ever Flowing Waters of the Cauldron.

    She was the water and the earth.

    She gave form to the formless.

    Then came with her consort, The God Beli, The Father of the Undying Flame.

    He was the spark that ignited the heavens.

    He breathed life into all things.

    Their passion gave birth to the Universe.

    Their love became the stars and their children were the planets that orbit them.

    The first beings to walk on these worlds are known only as the Ancients.

    They were the ones who founded the first civilizations.

  • New Series Story on Wattpad

    New Series Story on Wattpad

    I am going to be uploading one chapter at a time a story I started writing last summer.

    Born of Fire and Frost

    Fiona is an Omega wolf living on the Shifter Sanctuary world. She chooses to live alone deep in the snow-covered mountains but all that is thrown for a loop when she saves an off worlder named Ragnar from certain death.

    https://www.wattpad.com/story/390445174-born-of-fire-and-frost

  • 60K – Pause to review

    60K – Pause to review

    Half way there!

    I just hit 60K on the novel and now I am pausing to review what I have written so far and figure out the next part of the story.

    What I learned so far:

    1. The novel will not stay on the track I had planned
    2. Character’s keep surprising me with their actions
    3. The past keeps coming back to change the present
    4. The Prince won’t die… yet.
    5. The Fae Father’s aren’t the ass-holes I thought they were
    6. The villain isn’t who I thought it was

    I don’t know if I will be able to make my goal of finishing 120K words by the end of March because I am needing more pause time between writing sprints as parts of the story keep changing as I write them.

    The story has grown from being about two characters to being about 6 main characters and about 12 other cast of supporting characters and villains.

    When someone asks me what’s the novel about I keep answering I don’t know yet because the story keeps changing. I am having lots of fun writing it though.

    The next two weeks I am going to read over what I have so far. I have some changes to terms, place names, and some descriptions that I need to make within the body of work so far. I am going to be creating a time-line to track when events took place. I already have an extensive “wiki” that I have created for just keeping track of the world building and the cast of characters and side characters and their backgrounds. Every character with a name has a story and role in this novel.

    On a more personal note – this website started out as a place just to host my photography but since I started it a year ago it has grown into something more important for me. It is a living resume of my creative works. I upgraded the site so that it will be ad-free for anyone viewing it and I have a custom domain name – my author name – Clara D. Munro. This isn’t about “branding” but just making it easier for anyone to find me and see what I am up to. I don’t post on Meta or X (because they are trash) – I only post on Bluesky and LinkedIn.

    If you want to support my website and help make my published author dreams a reality – I set up a Ko-fi account that you can donate to. So far my only cost has been setting up this website but soon I will need to renew my Adobe Lightroom for my photography so any little bit helps.

    Thanks for reading and keep an eye out for future posts about new videos, writing, and photography!

  • Weekly Blog – 50 K words!

    Weekly Blog – 50 K words!

    Happy Imbolc Season everyone! I for one am ready to celebrate Winter being over in another six weeks. We got a fresh dump of snow this weekend which was a bit of a bummer because I missed mermaid swimming because of it. However, since we have had so little snow, I am kind of glad we got some before Winter ended.

    I reached the bench mark of 50K words on Project: Fox Hunt today! This is normally the point during a NaNoWriMo I am starting to feel burned out but because I am taking the process slower this time, I am not burning out. In the past when I had gotten to 50K I would be so tired that I wouldn’t want to keep writing. I am so glad I tried a new approach to writing this time. There’s been a lot of benefits to slowing it down and taking more breaks between writing days. The important thing is that I still have ideas forming and the story and characters are evolving. The worldbuilding keeps growing and getting more fine tuned as I write. I keep thinking about the story even when I am not actively writing it.

    I have edited four chapters in Project: Oak Grove and migrated them from Google Drive to Scrivener. I am happy to say that I don’t hate what I wrote seven years ago. I have already started to change things in it and adjust the wording. I have ideas about where to put in new scenes and what needs to be expanded on. That project is 50K already and I want to up it to 90K before I start the process of polishing up the draft in order to get it ready to query Literary Agents.

    My reading goal for 2025 is 52 new books read in a year and is currently sitting at 4 books read. I finished all of the The Empyrean books so far – Onyx Storm’s ending was crushingly sad. I am taking a break from fiction with a non-fiction pagan spiritual book. I have many of those partially read that I will be finishing this year as part of my personal challenge.

    I have gotten to the point with reading where I can’t sit through TV shows or movies right now because they are not as fulfilling as reading novels. I’ve cancelled all my streaming subs as a result – no sense on wasting money on it while I am not using it. Between books, audiobooks, podcasts, YouTube channels, and games I haven’t finished, I have more than enough stories to enjoy without needing to park my ass in front of a TV these days.

    Speaking of games, I picked up my 3DS and starting playing Pokemon Diamond from the start. I haven’t touched the device much since 2019 and even though the 3DS Nintendo Shop and WiFi network is no longer in existence, I have a number of games installed on it that I never finished playing to enjoy.

  • In for a penny…

    In for a penny…

    In for a pound as they say. This mid-week blog is here to announce that I am officially working on both Project Fox Hunt and cleaning up Project Oak Grove.

    I have decided to finish Oak Grove but before I can do that, I need to migrate it over to Scrivener and if I am going to do that, I might as well do a read over. I am going to work on it after I have finished my word count for Fox Hunt and lately I have been getting that done quicker leaving me with time in my evenings to work on other things.

    Oak Grove is about a town that has the highest missing persons cases in the country and one day all the missing people suddenly come back. The Sherriff and Deputy work together to find out who these people are and where they have been but none of them can remember. That is except one of them and he’s the long lost missing brother of the Sherriff.

    I wrote the first 50K of this novel in 2017 for NaNoWriMo but because I was so burned out by the end of that process, I never picked it up again. I figure that another 40K words will get me to the ending of the story I had hoped to write but let’s see what the read over and edits reveal about that process.

    I started researching how to contact literary agents and writing query letters and my goal is to get one of these two projects ready by June to start seeking publication. Oak Grove is a stand alone story but Fox Hunt will need at least three books to tell it’s story.

    I am not expecting success in getting published and I will be looking into the world of self publishing too but if I never try, I will fail 100% over what could happen if I try.

  • Small Wins -45K words

    Small Wins -45K words

    This last week was a bit hard because I ended up sick for a few days and then had a sore neck for a few more. I ended up only getting a few thousand words done but I am nearly ready to start working on the second half of the novel.

    I have found that I need to take two days off from writing a week in order to keep from burning out. Writing a novel is a marathon and not a sprint and making sure to rest and keep pace are important.

    I am glad that I am writing while the days are cold and dark because it keeps me motivated during this hard time of the year. I have set my goal of finishing the rough draft for the start of Spring – that way I can use the growing daylight energy to fuel the part of the job I have never done before – editing and getting the first draft ready to be talked about.

    I don’t even have a hook statement yet because I keep learning new things about my characters and adding new plot elements in as I write. It’s been a lot of fun just working on it and seeing where it goes.

    All the while, I have been keeping up with my reading goal of 52 books in a year. I am currently reading Onyx Storm and loving it. I am trying not to look at any spoilers online but I suspect the ending is another cliff hanger.

    My own story is building out to be more of a trilogy of stories – each one following a different set of characters on a different part of the over arching story line.

    I am more motivated than ever to finish the whole process of writing than I have ever been before. As my job because more and more unnecessary and my work load becomes less and less, the need to find something that calls to me becomes more and more important. I have even contemplated dropping my hours at my job in order to allow me more time to concentrate on writing but I also know that I need to pay my bills. However, having such limited time to write helps to make it important that I do not allow distractions to occur when I need to write.

    It a balancing act and one that I am doing my very best not to fail.

  • Act Two – Complete

    Act Two – Complete

    This week I finished act two in my rough draft and I have the set up for act three waiting to go.

    I reached 37K words but I need to get to 60K by the end of the month.

    I am trying to work a little bit on the project everyday but I am at the point where it’s time for me to sit down and read over the story so far and make notes of where I need to fill in blanks or edit out things that are no longer part of the story.

    I have found that with any well laid plans for a story, eventually you get to the point where you have to toss out your plans and start over. I am nearly at the point right now because I am getting close to the end of the plot points so far and now I need to find the scenes that are missing from the set up.

    Long story short – I need to find Chekhov’s Gun and make sure I put it into the right place.

    In the meantime, meet the two main characters of the project:

    Aidan Rowanheart & Victoria Oak

    and enjoy some themed music:

  • Week 6 – 20K

    Week 6 – 20K

    Last week was a busy one at my job but I managed to get in a few thousand words and I am now up to 20,000 words on Project Fox Hunt. My original goal was to write 90K but looking at the way this story is unfolding I don’t think I can do it any less than 120K words. That means I still have 100K left to go.

    I created a second document just to keep track of notes about characters, the world, history prior to the current story, and random plot points that do not have a place yet (or may never come to need). It also has a list of what is in each world and what is not. I may have to create a bestiary by the end of this.

    I have been writing the rough draft in Google Docs to start with. Once the rough draft is done, I will be moving the scenes into chapters using Scriver before compiling them into PDF that I can send out to beta readers. After that, the plan is to query literary agents but also figure out how to format into an e-reader document if I want to go the route of self-publishing.

    I am using my own reading consumption methods to help me figure out the best angle to approach publishing. I read 75% of my books on my phone or tablets now because they sync progress between them. If I love the book, I get a physical copy for my shelf. I do this because digital is cheaper to start with.

  • Week Four: Prophecy Time

    Week Four: Prophecy Time

    This week I worked on fixing a few things I previously wrote to add more tension into the start of the story. These were some of the blockers I spoke up last week. Now, I am in the process of writing a prophecy for the main character. I have not tried this before in a story because it takes some amount of poetry to pull off well.

    I’d been in D&D games before where the DM was master at adding these sorts of things into their games. It can work to great affect in novels too. I think about each of the Outlander books and how there’s always a moment where the main character meets some kind of a seer (a tea leaf reading, bones, ect.) and without giving too much away, there’s an element of Outlander that I am pulling inspiration from in Project Fox Hunt.

    I’ve taken a few days off of writing to allow my mind to consider my options for how to go about writing this and to do a few things that I enjoy such as going to the pool to swim in my tail. I always feel more creative after I go to the pool at the end of my work week. It gives me a chance to get out of my head and into my body.

    I made an update to this website to make it easier to navigate and read the blog posts. I think it looks better than before.