quebec | Ad Librum Aeternam

Miranda Kane

Get this: I’m at the 70% mark in my novel The Rise of a Heroine: Resurgence!!! Yup, I’m nearly at 3/4 and I think my progress amazing!

I never got this far in any of my books, but this one’s really hitting it (if I may say so what with Miranda being a boxing student).

I’ve been really stuck with the plot of the ending last week, BUT I found solutions and I’m ready to resume writing it. I’ll ?%$#$%? smash my goal and write “The End” soon. Hooray!

Miranda Kane and Thomas Lance are my lovelies and I can’t wait for you all to meet them and have my book in your hands, whether it be in physical, ebook, or audiobook!

(Melissa Benoist is my Miranda Kane’s faceclaim. And look, she’s ready, too!)

(Dylan O’Brien is my Thomas Lance’s faceclaim. Hmmm, Thomas is more doubtful about the whole thing, though… Hahah.)

Until then, wish me luck! I’ll go back to writing—it’s my last stretch with drafting!

I’m so ready for this! *punches her palm*

Secret Project

There’s also a secret project of mine I picked back up. It’s an old story that I… put away for a long while. I recently felt it in my bones again, you know? And I found solutions to the major blockage I had!

So, yeah, I’m actually excited about this. I’ll be shedding light on this project little by little. Hopefully, my progress will be easy (ha!) and steady (hm?).

Poetry Collection

Folks! I’m nearly done with my poetry collection. Yup! I wrote thirty poems or so, and I need about another 11 poems. After which I’ll polish them and send them to a professional editor. Soon, dears, soon you’ll be able to read them all in one place.

I’m also writing a new poetry collection, which is more personal in terms of themes and voice. And I’m starting one in French because hey, I live in Quebec, and we speak French first and foremost, so why not pair two of my favorite things?

World Building & Nightshade

Okay, get this: I picked up my Nightshade series again, but more for plotting and world building purposes. Why am I not writing it instead? Well, I find this story with the multiverse and the tangled storylines to be quite… intimidating. I don’t feel ready to tackle and do justice to this great series yet (I need more experience writing books), so I decided I’d still achieve progress by developing the plot (which sometimes gets messy) as well as the worlds we get to visit (and ain’t world building just fun?!?!??! YES!)

So, here I am, on a calm evening, scouring the Web for world building materials. And I found something quite interesting that turned out to be such an excellent surprise!

I ended up on Scribe Forge, and was hooked quickly by the collaborative work of authors and this genuinely interesting world building workbook.

So, you know what happened?

I purchased it. And I’m not mad. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised because not only is it really pretty (look at that fantasy cover! Actually, look at all their covers!), but for the hefty price (USD $20) it includes crucial information digested for you and classified according to their section (such as planets and space, society, resources, and more!) I mean, yeah, you get worksheets in those categories, sure, but real information and guidance on what to use to fill them. Uncertain about how to create a planet, its atmosphere and earth? Here you go, they’ve got you covered with important information on different atmospheres, types of earth, how lack of oxygen impacts the development of life, and so on!

I wasn’t expecting so much out of this workbook, in all honesty. Now I understand the price.

So far, I’m really pleased. I promise to use it for a while with Nightshade and then write a review about it for you, folks. Deal?

Gotcha!

See you next post, lovelies!

(Lily Collins is my Rosellia Rowland-Lovelace in my Nightshade series)

WOW, guys and gals!

Guess what I reached last week? That's right, 50% of my novel Rise of a Heroine: Resurgence! I'M AT 50%!!! HALFWAY THROUGH! I might not be done with it, but I count this as a big win. It's the farthest I ever got in a novel of mine, so this is huge. But also quite motivating and humbling, since it's proof of how I can succeed at this. I'm longing for the first draft. Speaking of draft, here's a picture of my thick baby printed out (of course, it's half of it since that's what I got but still it's pretty good, right?):

Thick Book (Copyrighted by Catherine Girard-Veilleux, 2020)

Honestly, this book baby of mine is ENORMOUS. It has 294 pages, imagine that! Need I remind you that's only… half of it?!

Here's the awesome cover my best friend made for me on Inkitt:

You can read the first 8 chapters here, too.

I always use Staples to print my books (or my progress at least) and I love their services. It's always ready in a day no matter how long or thick my document might be.

I prefer to print it out to edit it so I can see it better. But the truth is I hate to concentrate and narrow my eyes at the screen when revising; I prefer to hold the pages in my hands, and feel the book-in-the-making, you know? So it makes it more authentic, more real to me. But funny story is that due to its thickness, the rings for the binding I wanted weren't available; they were too small! So I had to pick my least favorite option, which is the ugly and large black plastic binding. Talk about chic… Anyways, at least I could choose a red cover. I don't know why but red always makes me think of Miranda Kane, probably because she's a boxing athlete and most boxing gloves are red. Or because she's fierce so red fits her. Either way, I'm glad I could get the red cover and the protective transparent cover.

Now, why would it need editing since it's halfway through? Well, I've noticed a few anomalies in how boxing works, mostly for students. I had a kind and generous interview with the head/director of the Fédération québécoise de boxe olympique, which is the reference in Québec. I thank him immensely for that. He informed me about how things worked and even used Miranda and her story as an example to describe her path. He was amazing and so understanding! Thanks to him, I now have essential information about the female boxing world and in general. So, due to these discrepancies, I decided to go over the half book I wrote and revised, fixing a few chapters and inconsistencies with the reality. Then, and only then, will I be able to go forth and write more realistically. Because something big is coming for Miranda Kane, and I have to be ready too, you know?

I have a strange way of writing books (which I'll make a post about), but in general, I write the story, then at a point when it feels critical and I'm moving through quicksand, I stop writing for weeks and do research instead about what's not coming qwell too me in the writing, so I do interviews and read documentaries (even watch a few!) and so on. But while I like to be familiar with the topic when I start writing, it's never to a deep point, it's on the surface. And when I can't go forward anymore, that's when I take a step back and do research. I found it helps me see more potential for a story and even gives me more excitement as I find so many new avenues for the story to go. Okay, it might cause more rewriting, of course, but overall, it doesn't bog me down in the beginning and prevent me from going ahead with the writing for fear of not knowing never never never enough. So many people stay in the research stage out of fear of committing to writing. Research is fun, don't get me wrong, I love research. But I prefer writing my stories. So I hit a compromise: write a certain percentage of the story and when I can't go on anymore because too many details elude me, then do research, and dig deep! Then with a better view of it all, come back and win!! Write it all in a fury with a deep passion like fire is after me. Because I'm so happy I get a better grip on the details and on the story world.

So, while unusual and risky, that's exactly how I do it. And so far it's going well, I went farther than any other novel I started. So I'll keep it, thank you very much.

By the way, I decided to focus my blog, Ad Librum Aeternam, more on my writing journey and writing tips because I feel I've got tips to give now being halfway through my novel, which is more than some achieve. I have two series of posts coming up as well: one is on writing comics and the second is on screenwriting. I think there's not enough free resources about these two fields and since I love them and am writing in them in my spare time, I figured we could go on these two journeys together. Of course, writing novels, short stories and flash fiction stay the main focus of my blog. Expect more writing tips along the way!

I can't wait to share with you what I learned so far!