BFS Update: December 26

1. Two novel drafts - 2/2 - Yep, I actually wrote those 700 words to get me to the end of Battlefield: Red. LOVE ME NOW, I finished my goal. :D
2. Script Frenzy '08 - Previously done.
3. Regular exercising (twice a week) - 15/100 workouts - ..FAILED...
4. Regular journaling (seven pages per week) - I'm all set for this week, so only one week left in the year...all I gotta do is write seven pages next week and I'm SET!
5. Regular creative writing (one piece per week) - 43/50 pieces, 6/12 accompanying images - Over the weekend I'll go on a writing and sketching spree...I promise...
6. One contest + one submission - Previously done.
7. More socializing - 37/40 events - I actually have three things planned before the end of the year, and something else will hopefully come up anyway...soooo...
8. "Progress" - Trying not to think too hard about this one. I ALREADY GOT IT. Shut up.
9. More studying/earlier start on homework/"good grades" - It'swinterbreakshutup.
10. Summer job - Previously failed.

Total:
- Not started: 0
- In Progress: 4
- Completed: 4
- Failed: 2
Overall goal: 5/10 goals by the end of 2008

I just have to get one more goal, and then I will have my overall goal. Hooray! And since I'm pretty sure I'll at least get the journaling goal...yay! That's awesome!

Two Novels: A Reflection on 2008

Yeah, so I decided I would actually make my "two (finished) novel drafts" goal tonight, since I already had one finished and my JulNoWriMo novel was pretty close to being done...

And really, with that one (Battlefield: Red), it was more of just getting the energy to actually make it to the finish line, since I remembered that when I gave up on writing anymore of it when I hit 50k on July 31, I was pretty close to where I wanted it to end.

So, for the first time in months, I opened that MS Word document, and scrolled down to the bottom. I skimmed a few of the last pages I had written (the ones I'd slammed out in July), and then went about just getting it to the last bit. I was even already in the final scene, more or less, so I knew I could probably manage to get it out in one sitting...

It ended up taking me under 700 words to get to the end, perhaps fifteen minutes or half an hour of somewhat distract writing...

Which made me wonder...

Why didn't I do this back in August? I mean, seriously! I know I rushed a bit to the end once I hit 50k, but...700 words? Sheesh.

But now I have it done, too, even though I kind of consider Battlefield: Red a failure as a novel draft. Technically, it's more like half a novel, anyway, or a very anemic first draft. It's either going to be Part One of a two-part novel (Battlefield: Green, or the "sequel" being the other part), or it will get beefed up enough to be a novel in its own right, in which case Green will be the...actual...sequel.

Unless I want to make the story into a trilogy, which seems more deserving of life than a...duet? I don't even know what to call it.

But the story, if I remember correctly, kind of sucks. Not much really seems to happen in Battlefield: Red, and while I do like the characters and the premise...it just...failed. Nobody has read this thing but me, and I kind of want to keep it that way.

Heh.

But actually, I read over a few pages of Larghetto (The Eleventh, my NaNo for this year), and I wasn't totally repulsed by it. I consider this a huge breakthrough, since I sort of twitch whenever I look at any text from Highness and I don't even want to look at Battlefield: Red for a looong time.

Maybe it's because Larghetto isn't the end of the series, and I have three more books to go before I realize it wasn't worth it...but hey! Not being totally repulsed by a book you've written is a GOOD thing, right?

So...2008, when looking at my written stuff...

I wrote two novels, and sort of started two others. There was my little Travels Through Dreamland escapade earlier in the year (around February, if my memory serves me) and my GothNoWriMo 20k start on Azami (that was my October "warm up" for NaNo). I won't exactly go back to Dreamland...sort of. Actually, you could say I'm about to - I stole Robert and Tawny and brought them into The Eleventh. The next book, Innocentemente (which might get a name change), opens with Robert and Tawny.

Heh.

I may or may not ever continue with Azami, but I don't know. For now, I like working on The Eleventh.

So...my third novel is actually something that doesn't repulse me. I think this is progress. Maybe 2008 wasn't such a horrible year, after all. And you know what they say - adversity breeds greatness.

Or whatever it is.

BFS Update: December 18

1. Two novel drafts - 1/2 - On Sunday I finished Larghetto! =D It was super exciting. Now I just have to (cheat my way to) the ending in Battlefield...and this goal is in the baaaag. I'll finish it up once winter break starts, I think
2. Script Frenzy '08 - Previously done.
3. Regular exercising (twice a week) - 15/100 workouts - Meh, fail.
4. Regular journaling (seven pages per week) - Still going above and beyond on this one.
5. Regular creative writing (one piece per week) - 40/50 pieces, 6/12 accompanying images - Other than the drawing, I think I'm doing fairly well. Carrying a notebook and going to Calliope club definitely helps.
6. One contest + one submission - Previously done.
7. More socializing - 34/40 events - I had like a week of socializing madness, and I definitely think I'll hang out with friends at least six times before the end of the year. It's winter break! =)
8. "Progress" - Eh. It's still progress. Even if it's the end, too, it was better than where I was at the beginning.
9. More studying/earlier start on homework/"good grades" - Getting near winter break...it's...a...slump...?
10. Summer job - Previously failed.

Total:
- Not started: 0
- In Progress: 5
- Completed: 3
- Failed: 2
Overall goal: 5/10 goals by the end of 2008

Stolen from...Facebook!

So this note has been going around...so thought I'd do it here instead of on Facebook. You know, just to see what I have and haven't read. And here it is:

List of books everyone should read. Bold every book you've already read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (working on it...I'm still in The Subtle Knife)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (in some form or another) (erm, Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, and A Midsummer's Night Dream...)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (book 1)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (fairly certain, but it was a long time ago)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (though I couldn't finish the last one)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (isn't this included in #33?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (again - isn't this part of #14?)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So other than the fact that Hamlet and The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe are technically on there twice (and so I counted them twice), that means that according to this, I've read 21% of the books that I should read.

I think I should be reading more. D: And the sad thing is that I would have been able to bold a couple other books if I'd gotten a different AP English teacher or if I took it last year (ie Catch 22, Jane Eyre, Jude the Obscure, Les Miserables, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, etc.)

...Yeah...just thought I'd post this. :P

Late Night Inspiration

Okay, so it's late...but for the past couple of days (while working on finishing my NaNo, I swear), I got hit with a story idea.

...It always happens when I'm writing a completely different story, doesn't it. D:

This one is inspired by an idea I've had for awhile and the character Tina from Wapsi Square (I'll put in a link...later).

Basically, it's about a girl who gets in an accident and whose body is partially taken over by a small number of other "people" (like demons or something...I was thinking five of them). In order to maintain her normal life span, she can only spend four waking hours each day in control of her body - any other time her body is awake but she isn't in control, one of the other "people" is. When that happens, she just watches, but doesn't take part in controlling her body.

Her body may or may not be prone to physically changing when a different "person" is in control.

It would either be a cliched "save the world" story (eheh) or just about her learning to deal with the other "people" she now has to share her body with.

And it would probably be called "Four Hours". :P

...Yeah...67396 words in Larghetto and counting. It is now officially longer than Highness. -_-

BFS Update: November 30

1. Two novel drafts - 0/2 - ARGH I won NaNoWriMo but I didn't actually finish the book! Plus, I still technically haven't finished Battlefield: Red...I'll probably rush to the end for that one, since I've given up on it (it's not good, though I might take a break and write Battlefield: Green later, anyway, just to finish the story). I'm going to work my butt off during December to finish The Eleventh: Larghetto properly, though. AND THEN I'LL HAVE MY TWO NOVELS, so there.
2. Script Frenzy '08 - Previously done.
3. Regular exercising (twice a week) - 15/100 workouts - No clue what the number is, but I've given up on this. NEXT YEAR, I SWEAR.
4. Regular journaling (seven pages per week) - I've been getting, like, 14+ pages per week. Heck yes.
5. Regular creative writing (one piece per week) - 36/50 pieces, 6/12 accompanying images - I need to draw more...and write more, too. I'll get on that, since I only have one month left...(and NaNo is over)
6. One contest + one submission - Previously done.
7. More socializing - 27/40 events - Um, I need to do some serious hanging-out with people. Yeah.
8. "Progress" - You know what? I'm orange-ing this. I don't care. Progress can be small. :)
9. More studying/earlier start on homework/"good grades" - Um, it's NaNo...?
10. Summer job - Previously failed.

Total:
- Not started: 0
- In Progress: 6
- Completed: 3
- Failed: 1
Overall goal: 5/10 goals by the end of 2008

Manaaaamana. =D I actually really like my story for NaNo this year, probably because it's using ideas I've tried to use before but never did (Sanura's world, Robert and Tawny, Clanae sort of). I also make fun of Twilight AND Eragon (and Clannad and Pokemon and Sophie's World). Um, I like making fun of things? But I'm mostly happy about making fun of Twilight, even though it's kind of downplayed in Repeat 2. Repeat 10 is where it all comes to the front (which is good, since Repeat 10 is supposed to be fairly long...though Repeat 11 could probably fill at least a NaNoWriMo all by itself).

I realize now I didn't talk about NaNoWriMo like...AT ALL here. I just went on Twitter and put my progress up there. =X I won on Thanksgiving (early in the morning), but the story is pretty far from over. Not to mention it's only the first book in a four-book series...it's Larghetto!

Larghetto

Innocentemente (I hate this word...)

Vivace

Espressivo

LIVE. It's supposed to be...ironic. =P

Actually, I think Vivace is going to be the most fun to write. Espressivo is going to be exhausting, but Vivace should be fun. =D And Innocentemente...is like a sophomore slump. Bleh. Even though it's got Robert + Tawny...and Peter + Mindy (+ Janet Liu + Mister Ian Woon). (Repeat 5, the middle part of Innocentemente, should be fun, but Repeat 4 is going to be exhausting and Repeat 6 is gonna be a little tricky).

I'll talk about it later. Maybe once I finish stupid Repeat 3 (and Larghetto, since Larghetto is Repeats 1 - 3).

...You know, all that above sounds really weird and convoluted and...kinda lame. Um, I'm glad nobody reads this. Perhaps if I ever actually become a bestselling author (ahahahahahaha like that'll ever happen) and I have a blog, I won't sound so lame when talking about my stuff. =X

A Thought

Because I had to get this out somewhere, and I decided Facebook notes might actually not be the place for it...

Which is ironic, since this is pretty much about noticing things on Facebook.

Basically...I pressed submit today. As of right now, my first college application has left my computer and zoomed across the country to the admissions office of my assumed number-one-choice university. Pretty monumental, huh? AND, even better, It's October 29 - many, many hours before the due date of November 1 will pass. So I have an early early decision application! Haha, cool. :D

Anyway.

As a normal teenager does, I went and changed my status on Facebook to something like "[My name] pressed submit".

Almost immediately, I got two notifications of two of my friends wishing me the best of luck. After I thanked them, I got a third notification of another friend doing the same. Now, two of these guys are already in college, and the other one is a junior (though he is trying to graduate early, so he's technically in the application process, too)...but then I checked other people's statuses.

A few people have similar status messages, the sort of "pressed submit" kinds. Then I noticed they all had similar responses as mine did - other people in our grade wishing them the best of luck.

It sort of struck me as...odd. Pleasantly odd, but still odd. I mean, I go to a fairly competitive school where a lot of kids treat each other as numbers to beat. Maybe I'd just gotten cynical, but I sort of always thought it was funny how you make all these friends, then have to beat out those same friends for the spot in the institution of your dreams. This is especially true with my school, which, although a public school, is very competitive and status-driven.

So it surprised me to see everyone being so supportive. Even people applying to the same school were giving each other words of encouragement, trying to calm each other's nerves. It's the total opposite of how I saw people treating the SAT - after scores came out, it seemed like all anyone wanted to do was compare, compare, compare.

But now, instead of comparing, we're encouraging.

...Okay, who are you people, and what have you done with my classmates? :)

I'd gotten sort of sick of my high school, but this sort of picked up my mood a bit. Maybe even in tough, stressful, super-competitive situations...we're all just nice people underneath the harsh, go-for-the-jugular exterior.

Or maybe it's because my computer decided to start playing a recording of Holst's Jupiter (from The Planets), which always makes me feel hopeful when I hear it (or, even better, play it in band). Or maybe it's because I had a fairly long chat (also on Facebook) with someone who graduated last year that I never really got along with but now am...?

I don't know.

But for whatever reason, despite a test in psychology tomorrow and a fair amount of English homework I have yet to do...

I'm...happy.

Bubbly, in fact.

...Yep. It's official.

Senior year OWNS junior year. :D

BFS Update: October 21

1. Two novel drafts - 0/2 - Heheheh...I still have yet to finish Red. I've been working on another novel, though, for GothNoWriMo. I'm not going to finish it before October ends, so it's going on hiatus during NaNoWriMo, but I think it's going pretty well. It's pretty much outlined, so it should be smooth sailing with Azami after NaNo finishes up. But yeah. It kind of annoys me that I've spent so much time writing novels this year but STILL have yet to finish a draft (even through cheating).
2. Script Frenzy '08 - Previously done.
3. Regular exercising (twice a week) - 15/100 workouts - No clue what this number is now, but it's not that high. I've given up on this - I have been unable to create a habit for this, and I started too late, anyway.
4. Regular journaling (seven pages per week) - Oh, I'm so on track with this. In fact, for the past couple of weeks, I've written so many extra pages I could have accounted for...like...eight weeks or something. I had an eventful past couple of weeks, I guess. :P
5. Regular creative writing (one piece per week) - 33/50 pieces, 6/12 accompanying images - I need to draw more and go to creative writing club more...I think...or at least not work on my novels quite so much. Heh.
6. One contest + one submission - Previously done.
7. More socializing - 24/40 events - Guh. I need to be more social, but everyone is always busy when I want to hang out. Except for walking home with one of my friends multiple times. I'm counting that as one (because I can).
8. "Progress" - Okay this is weird, because TECHNICALLY I sort of have been making progress. So I'm un-failing this and putting it on the table as...I don't know...red? For "in progress"? This one is confusing. (It's a zombie goal.)
9. More studying/earlier start on homework/"good grades" - Yeah this one is starting to not be so good again, though my grades are better than last year. Heh.
10. Summer job - Previously failed.

Total:
- Not started: 0
- In Progress: 7
- Completed: 2
- Failed: 1
Overall goal: 5/10 goals by the end of 2008

I really want to complete another goal. Yeah...whooo, October?

Azami is going really well, though. It's fun to write.

Oh, and I decided to expand the Urban Myth/Highness/Eternal Flame trio to being not four, but FIVE books. The "fourth" book, which I'm currently calling Storm Front (working title), is the one that's been stewing in my mind for awhile, but the "zero'th" book, Monarch (working title) suddenly popped into my head. It technically takes place before Urban Myth, but in the series, it would be put as the fourth book since Storm Front pretty much has to be the final book...so...yeah.

I'm going to rewrite Highness soon. :D It's cool because this time I have Storm Front and Monarch in mind when re-outlining it, and since Monarch is sort of a prequel to Highness and Storm Front is sort of a sequel, it helps give Highness some structure.

And it's cool because Jamie comes back in Storm Front. She's pretty messed up (again), but she's there! Storm Front Jamie is going to be so much fun to write (same with Storm Front Sissy from Urban Myth).

But yeah.

Aaaaah, October...

Pondering and the Common App

Well, it looks like I'll be stealing Lampur for an extra project: and that would be the personal essay for the Common Application.

Seriously. I'll need him, too, since for some reason, this ONE essay is really hard for me to write.

Honestly, writing this sort of essay isn't usually hard for me. Personal essay? Okay, what do you want me to write about? Any topic? Word count? A little over 500? Alright, please wait about half an hour...

Even the other essays! They're all, for the most part, not hard to write at all. I've churned out so many drafts of all the essays and mini-essays it's not even funny, and usually they don't take more than half an hour to go from reading the prompt to having a finished draft. My plan is during one weekend in October (probably that long weekend when I'm not writing for GothNoWriMo) I'm going to take all the drafts and go through and edit them, but I probably won't be redrafting most (if not all) of the essays at that point...

EXCEPT FOR THE STUPID MAIN ESSAY FOR THE COMMON APPLICATION!

I mean, SERIOUSLY! It's like, I know I want to write about NaNoWriMo for it, since that's really the only thing that's happened in my life of any interest, but it's just not working out for me.

I did try to write an essay about another topic. I tried to do a "funny-type" essay about house cats (specifically, my cats), and I personally really liked it. It was one of those things that was rough, but I knew it could be really good. Unfortunately, the topic itself (cats/pets) and the fact that it might only be funny to me (the dangers of attempted humor in college application essays) ended up killing the essay.

So yeah. NaNo it is, then.

And at least five separate drafts later, I still don't have a completed draft I think could be edited to something good. I've done a bunch of different ways to frame the essay, since I tried to do a flat-out "I DID NANOWRIMO YAY FOR ME" essay, and it was HORRIBLE. I compared it to an interview, I compared it to the humdrum of normal life, I compared it to autumn/November, I compared it to...other stuff that I can't remember...

And none of it works!

Guh!

So right now, I'm working on a new way to frame it that I think could work, and I'm pulling in somebody who means a lot to me. The big guns: my narrator from the novel I wrote during that fateful NaNoWriMo.

Lampur and I always seemed to get along. I'm hoping that by pleading for his help during this essay-writing madness, I'll be able to get out a draft that, while maybe not perfect or even editable, could hit the nail on the head in terms of topic and approach. I mean, if I can find a topic/approach that works, that would be progress, and I want progress. RIGHT NOW.

So he and I are scheming! We're going to write about a late-night character-and-writer-tag-team-type epiphany that supposedly happened around 2 AM on Wednesday, November 14.

This, of course, is an entirely fictitious event. The heart-to-heard I describe is actually happening more like NOW, but I think it would be much more impressive if it happened during NaNo itself. :P I might change the date, though.

Hooooopefully, the college admissions people won't find this blog and be like, "oh, she lied! She and her character actually had this conversation during September of the following year! Her integrity is shot! REJECT REJECT REJECT!"

So yes.

So...um...

Dear possible college admissions officer: Sorry the essay you read is sort of fake. This actually is how I think - Lampur and I just had a little trouble finding a time when we could chat like this. We decided it would be best to describe the conversation in the context of the actually novel-drafting challenge. In reality, during that time and even now, I've always been in contact with Matt and Sissy, the two main characters of the PREQUEL to the book I was writing. You know, the one with Lampur (and Jamie, if I mention her in the essay you just read).

I would have used Matt and Sissy, or even some other characters (like Diego, Christine, Ariel, Ben, Pheng, and Tehm from Battlefield: Red), but I thought Lampur and I would work better for this. I even talked to Matt and Sissy about it, and even though they were sort of a bit put-off that I wasn't using them (Sissy, especially), they agreed it would work better.

Um...please accept me? I love you? So very, very much?

...Yeah...

So anyway.

Wish me and Lampur luck! (And if this works, Lampur, I PROMISE you I'll listen to you a ton more for the Highness rewrite, will include you when I work on Urban Myth and Eternal Flame, and even write this so-called "fourth book" you keep telling me is going to happen.)

Copied from Facebook: Goal Reached

Actually, I reached this awhile ago. But here's what I thought about it!

One of my "lifelong goals" was to go across the western US on a train. Well, I did that...and then I kept going! Read on:

heyheyyyyyy. So I guess some people wanted to know what it's like to go across the USA on a train.

So I'm gonna tell you about it. :) And then I'm going to upload pics from the train later, and some videos maybe. But I took so many pics that it'll take awhile to look through them all. I went across the whole friggin country. There were a lot of photo ops.

Okay. So basically, when I did the train trip, we first took the California Zephyr from Emeryville to Chicago. Then we spent about two days there, then we took the Lakeshore Limited from Chicago to Albany, then switched to a coach train from Albany to Boston. (Trains have weird names.) On the CZ I was in one of the "luxury bedrooms" (the nicest option), and I shared it with my mom. On the LL I was all by myself in a roomette (the middle option). Some people road coach the whole way (which is just like sitting in a really nice chair). I felt bad for them.

So...CZ was definitely nicest. That was probably cuz I was in a nicer/bigger room, cuz the scenery was better, and cuz the train was nicer in general. The best part of the trip was from Emeryville - Denver (about 36 hours), because the Sierras/Nevada deserts/Utah deserts/Rockies are really pretty. After that was just cornfields and floods (which were depressing).

Riding the train Emeryville - Chicago is pretty nice (also I was in the bedroom). The bedrooms are fairly roomy, and you have a separate little bathroom/shower and sink/storage/mirror. The two beds are perpendicular to the way the train is moving (which I think helps when you want to fall asleep), and are sort of like bunk beds. During the day, the top bunk sort of swings up out of the way, and the bottom becomes a "sofa". Across from the sofa is another seat, but not as comfortable (though you face the way the train is moving on that one), and there's a little foldout table thing.

So that was us in the sleeping car...the next car over was the dining car, which was really nice. You get to sit at a nice table with these fake flowers and nice plastic plates (so they don't break - but they still look nice). They have a menu and stuff, though it's harder if you're a vegetarian. They still had some vegetarian options, though, except they ran out during the extra meal offered when we were six hours late. There was a lot of meat...I didn't usually eat it, though. The garden burgers weren't that great. D: Hot dog (what I got for the extra meal due to lateness) was fairly good. Salmon and lasagna were great. Breakfast was pretty good, too, and lunch was fine. Yeah.

And there was an observation car the next car over, with these huge windows, places to sit (and stuff to buy to eat), and some skylights sorta. I spent some time there, but not much, since I was trying to get work done, and people were talking a lot there. It was really nice, though. I think they had some "guided tours" of the places we were going through (like, a national park ranger-type person or something would have a microphone and talk about the places we went through as we went through them).

The best part of that trip was definitely going through the Rockies. There was this one canyon we went through that was really pretty - it was raining, and so the water brought out the red colors in the rocks and made the plants look really green and lush. It was really amazing.

The stops were okay. It was super hot and muggy for most of the stops (and smoky cuz a lot of people smoked), but this one stop in Colorado (Granby) was really nice because it was about to rain, so it was really cool and cloudy. It felt good to get off the train and walk around.

On the train, people seemed really nice. More social than I think they would normally be, because sometimes you sit with other people during meals or in the observation deck. The staff on the CZ were really cool, too. Our attendant in the sleeping car was named Reggie, and he was like, the most awesome person ever. The other two staff people I saw a lot, Elliot and Teresa, worked in the dining car, and they were really cool, too.

But it also seems like only one demographic really rides the trains. It was kind of weird. Part of that demographic was that they were all old, so I felt like the only teenager. That was fine, though, since I wasn't really in the mood to make one-day friends. :P

The LL (Chicago-Albany) was definitely not as nice, and NOT JUST because I didn't have as nice a room. But the room definitely made a difference. The roomette had similar bunk beds (except the bottom bed became two chairs facing each other instead of a couch), but not as nice, but that was pretty much all there was. Also, there was a toilet/sink, but they were right there in the room. Which was weird. No shower there, either, I think there was one down the hall. (But luckily, it was only 24 hours, so I just showered before and after the trip and skipped out on the weird shared train shower for this part).

Also, the windows weren't as clean - although, since I was in the top bunk the whole way from Emeryville, I at least HAD a window for this part (even if it was dirty). Also, I think the roomettes in the CZ didn't have their own bathrooms. But whatever.

I had a lot of trouble sleeping on the LL. The train rocked really violently back and forth, and I think because the beds were parallel to the way the train moved, that made it worse. I almost fell out of bed a lot (but the blankets were really tight around you, and there was this net thing, so I was okay). It was also really cold. And then I woke up at 5:45 after very little sleep, and decided just to stay awake...

The dining car was similar, but the staff wasn't as friendly. It just didn't seem quite as nice, maybe. The staff in general wasn't quite as friendly. The attendant, whose name I think was...actually, I forget her name...but she was sort of nice but removed. Not very chatty. The observation car was not nice at all - just some tables and some chairs and somewhat big windows. I spent a little time in there in the morning, though, because it was a bigger table.

I think the food wasn't quite as good in the LL, too, but that might just have been me being grumpy about not getting any sleep. :P That, and the scenery wasn't all that interesting. Riding coach from Albany to Boston was almost better, since the chairs were bigger and the scenery was nicer.

But yeah.

The train.

Overall, doing it across the country was okay, but it took a total of four days (not including the time in Chicago), and the best part of it was all at the beginning. So unless you want to do it just so you can say you went across the continent in a train, then go for it, but really, the part that was the best was Emeryville - Denver. So if I were you, and you wanted to take the train, I would do Emeryville - Denver on the California Zephyr. Oh, and make sure you go with friends and bring stuff to do, because otherwise it would be boring. :P

Oh ya. And you don't always have cell service, and there's no internet. I was only able to send people (mostly Kelly and Janice :P ) text messages because the calls would get dropped, and that was only sometimes. So yeah. Plan ahead. :P

BFS Update: September 12

1. Two novel drafts - 0/2 - Ugh, I'm SO CLOSE to finishing up Red, but I'm just so lazy! Sigh. Literally, I probably only have a couple more hundred words to go, and I can even make it shorter and more abstract or something. I'll (hopefully) have this goal halfway done (in terms of the official count/not counting Travels in Dreamland) by the next time I update these goals!
2. Script Frenzy '08 - Previously done.
3. Regular exercising (twice a week) - 15/100 workouts - School has disrupted my workout schedule, but I bike most days and I still managed to get in some workouts. The number is still an estimate, though. I don't think I'll make this goal, though. :P
4. Regular journaling (seven pages per week) - On track, although I have yet to journal this week. Oh well, it's Friday. I have about 24 hours to start to write seven pages - no big, I've done it before. A lot. :P At least I'm still on track to finish with this one!
5. Regular creative writing (one piece per week) - 24/50 pieces, 6/12 accompanying images - Ugh, I should have written one more little thing so that I could get to half way! But I've gotten in a groove of doing more of these, and I even did a sketch to go along with one of them. (Actually, I did a poem to go along with a sketch, but oh well, same difference.)
6. One contest + one submission - Previously done.
7. More socializing - 23/40 events - School has started up again, so people are busy, but I think that between now and August 10th, I've done a couple things with people. I just can't remember...so this number is still an estimate. I'll try to start going to events with people on the weekends, I think, or at least studying with my friends or something.
8. "Progress" - Previously failed.
9. More studying/earlier start on homework/"good grades" - Hahaha, I started trying to "tackle procrastination" for a project for Psych, and it did okay for the first week. Then I started procrastinating on it. :P So I dunno...ahahah. Yeah. Although I've been doing really well with this, actually! I've been starting my homework at 3-4-ish, usually around 3. So I'm making this RED!
10. Summer job - Still bitter...even though it's September...heheheheheh...

Total:
- Not started: 0
- In Progress: 6
- Completed: 2
- Failed: 2
Overall goal: 5/10 goals by the end of 2008

Awesome! I don't have anymore goals that I have blacked out as "not started"! Yee-yah. :) I definitely think I'll be able to get 5 goals met by the end of the year, especially since I have two completed, one as over halfway, and two as really-super-close-to-halfway, and that's not even counting the journaling goal! So maybe I'll be able to get six goals by the end of the year - or seven, if I feel that I met the "no procrastination goal". Which might actually be possible, since senior year seems to be a whole lot easier to handle than junior year.

Not like it's going the way I wanted it to, or anything, but it just seems "easier". Maybe not simpler or normal-er, but I think it's easier.

Or, at least, I'm getting more sleep than I did last year.

Meh.

More Plot Mortar and Pre-NaNo Angst

Whoooo 'nother story idea. :D

Except this one is more vague than the one I'll be using this October as a warmup for NaNo. This one is basically building off of a little idea I've had in my head since I watched Clannad and was severely disappointed with how the ending was. It was so...anticlimactic.

So I'm stealing that weird "dead world" with the girl in it, and using it as the basis for this. This idea is probably going to morph into what I'll be using for NaNo this year, as opposed to my original ideas (Urban Myth and a couple others, but Urban Myth was getting the most priority in my mind).

It's not like I don't want to write Urban Myth and Eternal Flame (and I might even, after those are written, brainstorm up a fourth book that is about post-Highness Polly, post-Urban Myth Matt, and post-Eternal Flame Lia...though I might not). I might actually work on Eternal Flame (the one that's going to need the most worldbuilding and has the most amorphous plot right now) as if I were NaNoing it this year.

But I think I just don't want to write them NOW. I was originally planning on working on rewriting Highness first, anyway, sort of as a yearlong project I can work on when procrastinating on schoolwork. I was planning on starting work on it once Battlefield/Red was finished (AKA when the Battlefield story is half over...I will probably start work on Battlefield/Green during 2009 or maybe even use it for NaNo this year if I feel like it).

By the way, Red is almost finished, even though I'm only at around 51k or 52k. This is because I'm rushing like HELL through to the end (no pun intended). I imagine that if this draft even reaches 53k, I'll be unimaginably lucky. :P But whatever, it's just a draft. And this means I'll at least be able to say "hey, I finished another novel's first draft" without lying. :P It'll probably end at around 52k, though...but whatever. I'm cool with that. I still stubbornly say it's better than Highness.

Anyway. What was I saying? :3

Oh yeah. I remember now.

Okay, so I have this idea that involves a girl waking up in "a world that has ended". Basically a desert wasteland with the vague appearance of a ruined civilization. This is the "basic" world in the story, and she spends the course of the story (which might be more than one book?) traveling around through different worlds - since in the "ended world", they have these huge towers, and at the top there is a gate to another world. So the first story is about her in the "ended world" before she comes across one of the towers. Then she goes through the tower into another world, and spends a somewhat short amount of time there.

Like maybe there's a time limit for each world she visits - like a week? Maybe she can only spend a week in each world before she has to return. And to be able to come back to that world, she has to...do...something?

And she's looking for a way to permanently escape the "ended world" and go back to a place that, as she puts it, "actually has people".

...Yeah. Not like a saving-the-world story (coughBattlefieldcough) but more of a saving-yourself story (coughHighnesscough).

Except it doesn't fail this time. I'm sure that in the end, she will find a world she can stay in. :)

But other than that (and the fact that she has a possessed ring with a spider on it that is her "guide", but usually only states the obvious...though it gives her someone to talk to)...I got nothin'...

I might start worldbuilding for random worlds soon, and maybe come up with arching plotlines that last for about 10k-30k for each world. Then I can gather the arcs into cohesive overarching plots to put into a book/multiple books. I don't know if I want this to be a series or a two-part or three-part story (like Battlefield - two-part stories are annoying!)

So yeah.

Whee, worldbuilding! :P Maybe I'll steal the Eternal Flame world for one of the worlds for...um...gaaaah, I need a working title. HOW ABOUT..."The Ended World"? Yeah, whatever, that works. -_-;;;

Uh-huh. Plot mortar shells again, whooo.

Last point! It's not like I don't want to write Urban or Eternal (I really do! ESPECIALLY Urban, since I gotta publish it somehow), but I'll just write them later. After all, my promise to myself is that I have to have drafted five novels before I start worrying about quality at all. Rewrites, novellas, and scripts don't count. :P So I'm almost at two - I think I'll write Urban Myth after I've done those other three. ;) Since Matt and Sissy are the ones who stay in my head and make snarky comments about everything. ^_^;;

...That was a very long and rambling blog entry that didn't exactly accomplish anything...

Plot Mortar Shells

I just got hit by plot mortar shells. That's my new literary term that I just came up with just now (and it went through a few draft names, such as idea bomb, idea grenade, plot grenade, and then to plot mortar). Plot mortar shells are something unexpected and exciting, unlike real mortar shells, which sort of kill you. Or at least wound you. But whatever the outcome, it's unpleasant.

Plot mortar shells give you story ideas when you least expect them. Like a shell, the shrapnel from plot mortar shells goes in different directions, and, by chance, one of the small possibilities from the shell stabs you in the forehead. Then it goes into your brain, and you're stuck with the plot idea.

Sometimes you get hit by multiple peaces of the plot mortar shell, so you get lots of different ways of taking the plot. Sometimes you get hit by one piece of the shell, then later, you accidentally step on some more of the shrapnel while innocently wandering around the bombed area, and as it embeds itself in your feet, you get another take on the plot.

Whatever it is, it's exciting, and I got hit by some a few hours ago.

It started innocently enough - I was perusing the NaNoWriMo forums by chance, landing in the Life After NaNo subforum. Then I clicked on something with an interesting phrase in the title, "GothNoWriMo", where you can write 20k, 30k, 40k, 50k, or 60k (or another number, but those are the examples given on the Proboards forum for it). The 20k novella goal looked rather tempting to me, and after reading up on elements to gothic literature...

I found myself with a basic plot idea. I think the first thought I had was a slightly-new version on an old idea that's been bouncing in my head ever since I read about the Greek myths (particularly about Venus and Cupid, or something) in Sixth Grade. It was something like this:

A girl trapped in an old castle falls in love with the dragon that's keeping her there. But it's creepy.

Now it's something rather different.

There is still a girl, and she's trapped in an old castle. Except, instead of being isolated there with only one person to talk to (or, in the old version, one dragon), there are a lot of beings nearby - they're all monsters, though (except the spiders - they're normal spiders). She's not falling in love with whose keeping her there, though, since he's going to kill her (and he thinks she's his dead daughter). Instead, she falls in love with the first monster to understand her, due to the fact that she only speaks French (and a little English), and they're all Japanese.

My goal is to actually end the first draft around 20k words. I want to get better at making my thoughts concise, and I actually want to FINISH this novella within a month. I may or may not later take that idea and expand it into a full-sized novel later...

But, hey, the first college app is due the day after the last day of GothNoWriMo. A last-minute addition to my current list of literary accomplishments (two novels, a screenplay, an illustrated novella/"light novel", and some contest-placing short stories and poems) couldn't hurt, now, could it? :P And I really, really, really like this idea.

Currently, I've even chosen all the key characters and minor characters. I have the main romantic couple (the French girl - nicknamed "Azami" by the monsters - and the monster she falls in love with - Hakutaku!!!), the "evil" old blind man who may become a ghost or monster or something (Yamaguchi Ryouichi), the dead daughter who may or may not actually take part in the story (Yamaguchi Sumiko), and Azami's other friends: the kind-hearted Karakasa, the rather sweet pack of mekurabe, the sympathetic Ningyo, the almost homocidal Nekomata, the ecologically-minded Kirin, the guard Otoroshi, and the enigmatic Itsumaden. And, of course, the spiders, since everything I write has to have spiders SOMEWHERE.

Some of them might get cut to keep the story's first draft short, though. Karakasa, the mekurabe, and Otoroshi are STAYINGSTAYINGSTAYING, and Itsumaden will be in the story, too, but his "screentime" could get scaled back. I do want to include Ningyo, Nekomata, and Kirin, though. :( And I sort of want to include a hainu, too...or more monsters! I discovered an awesome encyclopedia-type site about Japanese monsters, which is realy helpful. 

The Obakemono Project (Click it and look! It's really cool! And I'm 99% sure the monster on the homepage is a hakutaku!)

So yes.

And I can't decide between two original names for the French girl (before they all just start calling her "Azami" due to the fact nobody can pronounce her real name or think of a good nickname from it). I either have Juliette-Agathe Lambert or Jacqueline-Audrey Lambert. Heck, I don't even know if I can pronounce those names. "Azami" is so much easier. :)

...I just hope I can always keep an air of tension or creepiness (THIS IS WHY I WANT NEKOMATA, SO HE CAN EAT CORPSES OR MAKE THEM DANCE), and not make it sound like (gulp) fanfiction.

Blegh.

Oh, and by the way, the production title for this story is Thistle Flower! :)

Creative Writing: A Definitive Count

Okay, so I did an "official" count of all the creative writing stuff I've done since the beginning of the year.

I *think* I did 8 pieces of "random prompt" little short...things, and I also wrote two poems. So that's 10. I also wrote 2 things (a poem and a short story) for Humanities, bringing the count up to 12. Then I counted three pieces for the Humanities project, which gives me a current total of 15 written pieces.

Whoo, that's four more than I originally thought! :P

BFS Update: August 10

Mrr. I have some other posts I should probably put up here, but how about (yet another) BFS update?

Oh yeah - and JulNo. Obviously, I found myself with a huge wordcount debt with about a little over a week left of the month (I think I was over 20k behind). Somehow I managed to hit 50k on the 31st like I planned (yay, I won), but it involved typing between 4-5k (and one day of 7k) for pretty much every single day I wrote (which was all but two or three?).

However, the draft is not done. There might be 10k left to write, maybe even up to 20k.

And the even more annoying thing is that this seems to be a two-part - maybe even three-part - story. So that means that once I have this draft done, I'm only HALF done. No epic final battle scene for me yet. D:

But yeah. That also means I'm not halfway done with my 2-drafts goal! Sad...I'm going to try to finish "Red" before school starts, though. We'll see if I can do it. :P Definitely will try to finish it before NaNo, though. I also want to rewrite Highness...REALLY want to rewrite Highness. I just want to have another novel draft done before I go back to my "baby".

Anyway, without further ado:

Key:
- Not Started
- In Progress
- Completed
- Failed

1. Two novel drafts - 0/2 - I have 50k of Red, and still that 17k from Travels back in February. Still need to get crackin' on this one...I guess...but yay, JulNo! I won!
2. Script Frenzy '08 - Previously done.
3. Regular exercising (twice a week) - 10/100 workouts - I just got back from vacation, and am trying to get a routine back. Blergh. Number is an estimate...
4. Regular journaling (seven pages per week) - On track - and for the past week or so, I've been writing HELLA surplus. Probably because I was on vacation, and I needed to rant. :P
5. Regular creative writing (one piece per week) - 11/50 pieces (edit: 15/50), 5/12 accompanying images - Just wrote another one! I'm sticking with my previous estimate, by the way. That means I have to write 39 more little short things and draw 7 more images for them before the end of the year. Aiiaa. D:
6. One contest + one submission - Previously done.
7. More socializing - 21/40 events - I was on vacation, but while I was away, I hung out with my friend who I only see once a year! Twas fun. And my friend and I hung out yesterday And I did some after-school stuff with friends during summer school. The number is still just an estimate, though. Halfway point. Whoo! :P
8. "Progress" - Previously failed.
9. More studying/earlier start on homework/"good grades" - It's...summer? Summer homework and college apps don't count right now! Although, I finished my homeWORK, and have been working on apps, so now I just have studying and stuff...but it's still summer...waaah...
10. Summer job - Previously failed, and currently hating on the people who DO have it. (Angry face.)

Total:
- Not started: 1
- In Progress: 5
- Completed: 2
- Failed: 2

Haha, nothing actually changed, color-wise. :P

My brain. It is being difficult.

Yeeah. Okay, so obviously my Twitter feed is telling the world how I am not doin' so hot during this...hot...month of July. Perhaps doing JulNoWriMo was a mistake.

Except, deep down, I am determined to finish JulNo! You see, as if right this second, I have a couple disadvantages this month that almost make it more difficult than NaNo, despite this being summer and not a swampy school year:

• I have summer school, which kills at least five hours of my day.
• I have (rather time consuming) summer homework due on the first day of real school that I'm trying to be at least somewhat proactive about.
• I have college apps to do, and I'd rather get a large chunk of them done during the summer (so I've been doing what I can right now...aaaand maybe using them to procrastinate on JulNo!)
• I am tired -.-
• My stupid brain is spending its time thinking of things other than my plot. Stupid brain.

Oh, but in a few days...I might be able to turn the tides of this losing battle! For, you see, summer school ends on Friday (OH THANK GOD ECONOMICS FOR DUMMIES WILL BE OVER), and after that, there is still a rather sizable chunk of July left over. Now, I was originally planning on doing most of my JulNo BEFORE Tuesday of next week, because I am leaving on a train trip/plane trip after that, and really didn't feel like bringing my computer.

Now I'm thinking my computer and I are going to have a fun-filled vacation together. Screw the difficulties of traveling alone with a laptop through airport security - I'm gonna do it! (Aw, I hate traveling on planes with laptops...)

Also, I have recently been rewatching the Lord of the Rings movies with my family. The last time I watched them (like, a year ago, at least) I got sort of sick and tired of them. Now, after having taken a laaarge step back from them, I am totally amazed! Luckily, they have reignited (I don't know if that's a real word) the flame of inspiration for my JulNo. So now I'm starting to get lots more ideas.

The downside is that now Red is hella complicated, and it seems like it wants to become either a very large story or a duet or trilogy or something. Nurr. And I sort of have to plan it as I write it, and that never seems to work (coughHighnesscough).

Oh well.

But hey! Let's look at those disadvantages, and now look at my situation in the next half-week to a week or so:

• SUMMER SCHOOL IS ENDING AAHAHAHAHAHAH!
• I am nearing completion on one of my three summer reading books for AP English, and it's the longest one. After this book, all I have to do is get 30 pages into one of the other books, and I'm halfway through. Considering Invisible Man (the one I'm reading right now) is 581 pages, I think that says a lot.
• I am running out of available college apps to fill out since colleges are lazy and don't like putting their supplements up until August. Damn them.
• ...Eh...I'm always tired. I'll live. :P
• Thanks to Peter Jackson, those lovely movies each of an ungodly length are starting to pull my brain away from teen angst and futile plots based off of said teen angst and more towards what I should be thinking about - JulNoWriMo!

Yar.

Hopefully, I can still win.

TO WAR! 8D

JulNoWriMo and BFS Updates

Wow! It's July already. In fact, it's July 4th. Happy American Independence Day (if you are from the USA, and since I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who ever looks at this blog...I'm American...yay, American independence...?).

Anyway, right now I am immersed in a NaNo-in-July expedition with one of my friends (the only friend from "real life" who did NaNo '07 with me - we actually signed up without each other knowing, and then found out). Currently I am on track, which is both good and bad. The pace is 1613 words per day, so it's a LITTLE less intense than NaNo's infamous 1667...because 54 words makes SUCH a big difference. :P

But anyway, right now I have 6674 words, and today's quota was 6452. So I pass. But tomorrow I will probably have NO time to write because I'm in LA all day (flying down in the morning and flying back up at night), so I'll be behind and have to play catch-up on Sunday cuz I didn't get ahead. (Angry face.)

My JulNo's also sort of sacrilegious in terms of the Christian religion, even though it's based off of real folklore. Namely, the Miami shelter children's folklore, which is the most awesome thing EVER.

Except it would be better if there was no Miami folklore and no homeless children. :'( I hate poverty. And animal species facing extinction because of humans. And the environment getting screwed over cuz of us. Which is why if I miraculously ever get published, I'm gonna donate money I make off of books to related philanthropic causes! Like if my JulNo ever becomes publishable and gets published, it would all go to helping the kids in inner city Miami. :)

Even though my novel takes place in New York City.

...That's...artistic liberty. -_-;;;

MY MAIN CHARACTER'S NAME IS DIEGO SANCHEZ. HE IS AWESOME. I WANT TO ADOPT HIM. -_-;;;;;;;

Cough.

...Well, I guess it's better to love your main character to death (HE'S EIGHT YEARS OLD!!!) then want to kill them (coughJamieKissingerfromHighnesscough).

^_^

Anyway.

So...BFS updates? Hmm? :3

Key:
- Not Started
- In Progress
- Completed
- Failed

1. Two novel drafts - 0/2 - Alright, so I still have that 17k of that story I started writing back in February, but I don't care about that anymore. Right now I'm focusing on "Red" (production title), which is my JulNoWriMo novel. About 6.5k in, if I remember correctly. So if I do this and do normal NaNo, I should be on track to get this one. :D
2. Script Frenzy '08 - Mwahaha I love being a screenwriter! ^_^
3. Regular exercising (twice a week) - 5/100 workouts - I don't think I'll finish this one, but at least I'm going to the gym! Doing weights on the weight machines is kind of fun...even when you twisted your ankle...
4. Regular journaling (seven pages per week) - On track with this one, even though I've been staying up late on Saturday nights in order to keep it...heheh...
5. Regular creative writing (one piece per week) - 10/50 pieces, 5/12 accompanying images - No progress since the last one. :3 I should probably go write some haiku or something...eheh...
6. One contest + one submission - Previously done.
7. More socializing - 14/40 events - I went to lunch/hung out with a friend after summer school, but it's been pretty quiet. I still have to look through and see if I missed any from the earlier parts of the year.
8. "Progress" - Previously failed.
9. More studying/earlier start on homework/"good grades" - Summer school = too easy. Too easy = doesn't count. :P
10. Summer job - Previously failed, and currently hating on the people who DO have it. (Angry face.)

Total:
- Not started: 1
- In Progress: 5
- Completed: 2
- Failed: 2

Well, not much difference in any of them, huh? :P I want to complete one again! Completing two during the course of one month made me spoiled. I think the other three are going to be going up against the end of the year...ahahah...

BFS: June 18 Update

Overall goal: 5/10 of specific BFS goals:

Key:
- Not Started
- In Progress
- Completed
- Failed

1. Two novel drafts - 0/2 - I'm going to do an unofficial "JulNoWriMo" with my friend, so I'm currently debating which novel I should write. HOPEFULLY, sometime in August, I shall actually have one of my two novel drafts done! One can only hope... :P
2. Script Frenzy '08 - Still basking in the glory that is this finished goal. :D
3. Regular exercising (twice a week) - 1/100 workouts - I FINALLY got my butt over to the gym, and got all trained up on the weight machines (even though I sort of already knew how to use them, but they had to set up my account on the weird computer thing, so whatever), and did two short aerobic workouts on the treadmill. Ohmigosh, I need to run more. I've gotten so slow and weak and flabby and eww. This summer, I will work out a lot, and have a stronger/fitter body. Nurr.
4. Regular journaling (seven pages per week) - Keeping up with this one. Had a little trouble finishing the seven pages the last few weeks, but this week I went over. Summer is usually really hard for me with journaling, but this is my third summer with my journals! Third time's the charm! I CAN DO THIS!
5. Regular creative writing (one piece per week) - 10/50 pieces, 5/12 accompanying images - I added three pieces and three accompanying images due to the fact that I wrote a long-short story and illustrated it. It took over 50 hours, ended up being 45 pages of story with 30 illustrations, plus one "bonus" illustration on the cover and one piece of concept art. AND I was the only one in my class to get 100 percent on that project! I should probably give myself more, but that gives me a nice even number in each category (10 and 5, respectively), so neh.
6. One contest + one submission - Meh, it's done. Hopefully I'll submit some more things to my school's slightly-pathetic-yet-still-existent literary magazine in the fall.
7. More socializing - 13/40 events - I had a super social week. :D For six straight days, I had a social event each day, some that took the whole day. 'Twas fun. I still have to go through and count up old events, though, so I probably have more events, anyway.
8. "Progress" - You know what? Shut up. (Failed - I'm never going to make this goal ever again, not for anyone.)
9. More studying/earlier start on homework/"good grades" - Meh, it's summer. Putting this on hold, even though I have schoolwork over the summer. Eheh.
10. Summer job - T_T

Total:
- Not started: 1
- In Progress: 5
- Completed: 2
- Failed: 2

Well...I guess this is good! I still have my two completed goals, so I only need three more to reach my "overall goal". I only have two failed goals and one "not started goal" (which is only like that because I have no idea how to deal with it since I can't really figure out how to count it). And I have five goals in progress! I could probably finish with six or seven goals at the end of the year - I have a feeling the journaling one will be doable. Same with the socializing goal, seeing how I almost doubled my numbers in a week. If I get on it, I can probably do the creative writing goal, too.

And that's five.

I'm optimistic about this thing, especially since I started exercising again today. :D Yay for having time to exercise! I love exercising, because I know that every breath I take and every thing I push and everything I do is making me stronger. And I know that if I keep at it, slowly and little by little, I'll get stronger, look better, and find the exercising much easier.

I can't wait to be stronger! Maybe I'll look better and feel better about myself, too, which is always good. I'm not fat, and I'm sort of thin I guess, but I'm NOT fit, and I wish I was. So I think I'll work really hard to make myself healthier and stronger this summer, and maybe I'll be able to feel more comfortable with my appearance at the end of the summer. Hopefully I'll get a routine going (my goal is three-to-five times a week, hopefully four weekdays and one weekend day) so it'll be easier to continue during the school year. Nurr.

BFS Update: May 25

Okay, so there are two reasons I'm writing this on May 25 (which is a Sunday, bee-tee-dubs).

Reason 1: I haven't updated this thing in awhile with a proper BFS update, so why not?

Reason 2: I was really tired, but I had to talk to a friend about a school thing, but she couldn't talk, so she said she'd call at 11:00. I couldn't tell if she meant 11:00 at night or 11:00 in the morning the next day, but she sounded like she meant at night. It is now 11:32, and she hasn't called...and now I'm somewhat awake. So I'm killing time by writing this. I don't know, ask someone else.

Alright. So here it is...the formatted BFS goal update thing:

Overall goal: 5/10 of specific BFS goals:

Key:
- Not Started
- In Progress
- Completed
- Failed

1. Two novel drafts - 0/2 - Still no progress because of no time, but I still have that 17k-word thing lying around. I'm planning on doing JulNoWriMo with my friend, so hopefully I'll get a draft done by the end of July.
2. Script Frenzy '08 - Ha-hah! I completed this with a 105-page screenplay (West Heaven Road), verified it, and totally beat this goal! Yus! This goal is...completed! Yay!
3. Regular exercising (twice a week) - 0/100 workouts - Haha, time? What is time? I sure don't have any of it! (This one will be a summer one, I can tell.)
4. Regular journaling (seven pages per week) - I've been keeping up with this with very few problems. I like journaling, and it's a habit now. I recently finished my sixth journal, and now am on my seventh. I also just realized that five of my seven journals involve some part of this academic year. That's kind of...strange...
5. Regular creative writing (one piece per week) - 7/50 pieces, 2/12 accompanying images - Ummm...I wrote a short story a week ago for school, but it was extra credit, so I'll count it. I also wrote this longer story for school, and it will have images (it already has some, hence why I counted one more). I figure once it's done I'll count it as a second image thing, since it's so big! I also wrote two poems (which is weird, because I usually steer clear of poetry). Haha...yeeeah...need to get on this, or at least keep track of what I have done.
6. One contest + one submission - Did this! I entered a short story and a poem to a school contest. I did badly, though, overall. My story did not place, and my poem only got third because nobody writes poetry. Oh well...blehhhhh...at least I got this goal. (Nurr.)
7. More socializing - 7/40 events - I didn't keep track, but I'm pretty sure this dinner thing I went to wasn't counted in with the six events I had before. Later on, I'll count more thoroughly and get a more accurate number.
8. "Progress" - No. Flipping. Comment. (Emo.)
9. More studying/earlier start on homework/"good grades" - ...Meep...
10. Summer job - T_T

Total:
- Not started: 3
- In Progress: 4
- Completed: 2
- Failed: 1

Well...hey, I have two completed! My overall goal is to have five, so that means I only need three more to consider myself a winner. That's pretty cool, to have actual progress made. :) I have a feeling I'll get the journal goal, since I've made a habit, and habits are hard to break. (I say this, but summer is always when I die journal-wise, and we aren't at summer yet). I think I can also scrape up 33 more social events to go to, especially since I probably missed a few that I have gone to in that number. Once summer comes, I'll try to hang out more with friends. :) And then, during summer break, if I can write a lot of short things, I can probably get 50 by the end of the year. -_-;; Two novel drafts also seem sort of likely if I can do a novel in July and then do NaNo (or something).

So yeah. Optimism, yay.

Oh yeah! One more thing - I've decided that I want to completely rewrite and rework Highness. I've already sort of thought up a different personality for my narrator (Lampur), and am trying to rework the whole Liandou system to be more militaristic (ie, I looked up US Army rankings and tried to give some that fit to people). I'm also killing the plot and getting a new one. Sort of. I dunno. :D

Whoohoo!

Okay, so this is some progress! Not on the Screnzy front (I'm still at 77 pages, and I haven't written at all today - I don't think I'll have a chance to, but I'm still on track to win, so it's okay, I guess)...but...

On my BFS goals! I completed one for the first time! I'm so happy! :D This is such a feeling of accomplishment...if I keep at Screnzy and write only 23 more pages of my script, that means I'll have two goals done by the end of the month. And since I haven't accomplished any of the others, that's pretty good. Well on my way to considering myself a winner of 2008 (which, I have decided, is not my favorite year...ahaha, movie reference).

Anyway, I entered a school short story contest. I submitted a short story I wrote back in December for another contest-like thing, but edited it to fit the school contest. I just didn't have enough time to write another story or go through editing something I've written recently, and the story I sent in was already edited heavily back in December. I dunno, I was pretty proud of it, even back then. I'm usually really bad at short stories, especially ones that are out of my comfort genre (any sort of fantasy). It was called "Dead Music". :)

And..as an added bonus...it was a split short story/poetry contest, right? So earlier this week, I wrote a poem late at night titled 1:57 am (I can't remember if it was actually 1:57, but I think it was earlier than that...not sure, though). I finished it the next night (a lot earlier than 1:57 am!) and read through it again today. I made a minor edit, figured "what the heck!" and slapped it on my email as well with "Dead Music". Usually I only write poetry for school assignments (basically: only if I have to - I just like prose a lot better than poetry), but I was sort of excited to enter a poetry contest.

The contest is for a school literary magazine, the same one I submitted a short story to earlier in the year (as a normal submission, not for a contest). Maybe, if they're still accepting submissions, I'll write another poem and see if I can get it printed normally. It's a lot of fun! :D Perhaps I'll dabble some more in free-verse poetry and put them on my writing blog (because I neglect it too much).

So yup. My goal for submitting a story to the magazine and entering another story in a contest is now complete! Even if I don't win, I still feel a sense of accomplishment. Now I just have to focus on homework and Screnzy for the rest of April...nehhh.

Writer's Block and Twitter

Okay, so I don't know if I've said this before, but I'm so addicted to Twitter right now. It's so much fun to write little microblogs and update really frequently! Especially since I have a good focus right now, which is Screnzy.

Speaking of Screnzy, I have 71 pages right now. That's a little bit ahead of where I'm supposed to be (if you go with the 3.3333 pages a day thing, which is the closest you can get to an equivalent to NaNo's 1667 words, I'm about 4.3333 pages ahead of where I should be today). However, I used to be something like 10+ pages ahead, and was going at a wonderfully amazing 4 or 5 pages a day. And that's added on to the 20 - 30 pages I wrote during the first day or two.

Now it seems like even a page is hard to write. In the past week, not including today, I wrote on two days. I only managed to get 5 pages a day on each of those two days because I just spewed pointless dialogue...today's page was actually the first I've written in awhile that went towards moving the story along.

I'm afraid I've hit the slump/Writer's Block of Screnzy. :/ I really want to finish, but now the 29 remaining pages seem very daunting. Even if I don't finish the story (which I want to do), I want to hit 100 pages so I can be a Screnzy winner! But wow...29 pages seems incredibly daunting.

Also, I'm doing poorly in school compared to first semester, where I wasn't doing so wonderfully to begin with. My grades in my three worst classes (history, math, and physics) are completely jumbled around (math is my best grade even though it at least used to be my worst subject...). I'm not prepared for tomorrow at all! I totally burnt out during February or March, and Spring Break didn't let me refresh since I was doing more school-related things during it. I'm scared for my grades, and all I want to do is go back to writing my script.

Sigh.

First day of Screnzy!

Alright, so Screnzy is based off of page count, not word count like NaNo is, right? So you need 100 pages of script to win, which boils down to exactly 3 1/3 pages per day...but I figure I'll call that 3 1/2 because you'll be estimating and that's much more of an easy estimate (plus it'll put ya ahead by five whole pages at the end of it!)

So today I lucked out and got a light homework load, and was determined to put a system in place: no doing ANYTHING at home (other than feeding the cats) until one page of script is written. So I sat down for what seemed like five minutes (I think it was really closer to ten or twenty) and started writing Last Lights. Then I checked the page count, since I'm using Celtx and can't see the page count when I write - and I already had 3 1/2 pages!

I'm now very optimistic about doing this...

Why?

I have 13 pages now! That's about where I should be at the end of April 4, not April 1! This means I'm over 10% of the way through...and only on the first day!

I'm so excited - I might finish early! Technically, I "finished" early with NaNo, too, since I hit 50k on the 25th due to a very long day of writing with my NaNo buddy, but I didn't actually finish the novel until the wee hours of the 30th.

But I outlined Last Lights before I even started (that's what I spent a lot of last week doing after discovering a vital plot bunny the week before and mentally brainstorming), so it's really easy to write now. Outlines are wonderful things, especially if they're vague enough to still keep the draft creative. :)

Anyway, things are starting to happen in my script with bleeding excitement, and I'm going to go sleep now (or something).

I'll talk more about Screnzy later - if you want to see how I'm doing (if you, the reader, even exists), then check out my Twitter!

Screnzy!

Alright! So Screnzy begins shortly...I've decided to go the Twitter route, and hopefully wean off of a Facebook status-updating addiction. I'll try to post a lot of updates on what I'm doing (especially Screnzy-related ones!) on Twitter so I can track my progress/life/spazzes/whatever.

As for Screnzy, I have an idea I'm calling "Last Lights" as a production title, though I already have the real title decided. "Last Lights" came from a title generator, and I thought it sort of fit, so I stole it (kinda sorta). :P

It is, as my profile puts it, "Spirited Away meets Labyrinth". It's slightly based off of my bare minimum knowledge of Korean mythology, stars a Korean-American teenage girl, and involves many made-up names by yours truly that probably cause many Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and everyone else to turn in their graves.

What? I'm European-American, gimme a break. :P

Anyway, I'm almost done with turning my basic outline into a slightly more detailed one. I really don't have any time to work on it at school tomorrow, but hopefully I'll be able to slam out at least two pages once I get home. I figure if I can get three-and-a-half pages a day I'll be golden, since really all you need is three-and-a-third (but that's harder to guesstimate). Heck, if I can do something like two pages when I get home and two pages before I go to sleep, I'll REALLY be golden! ^_^;;

Yar.

I can't wait! But I think I'm gonna sleep instead of staying up late to start. Why did April 1 have to be on a Tuesday this year? :'( I liked how November 1 was on a Friday...it meant I could slam out some words before going to sleep, then spaz through the school day, then come home and write some more before taking a nice long nap (and then waking up, eating dinner, and writing some more)...

Nevermind.

I just realized it was on a Thursday...but it felt like a Friday to me because I was sick the next day. Haha, I'm silly. ^_^;;;;;;;

Nar.

Well...wish me luck! I'm really going to try my hardest to:

a) Write a 100 page script during April
b) Not fail all my classes
c) Somehow also get started on my "creative" final project for English
d) Study for a bunch of BIGBIGBIG tests I have during April and the first week of May
e) Not...die...

Haha. See, my teacher for English (I'm taking a humanities course) assigned us our "final project", which is a creative thing based off of the 6 questions of Socrates. He HAD to tell us this the day AFTER spring break, of course, and the day BEFORE Screnzy...so it's not like I can really make an outline in less than a day or adapt my current idea. I like my current idea! I don't want to sully it's Screnzy-like appeal by making it a big part of my final project. Plus, I don't think I can really change it to being about the "what is good, what is virtue, what is piety, what is courage, what is justice, what is moderation" thing.

Bleh.

Maybe I'll write a short radio drama script or comic book script and then flail about and actually record the drama/draw the comic book to the best of my ability after/while I write my screenplay...

...Psssshtttt, like that'll actually happen!

Well, I'll hopefully post more with progress and thoughts on Screnzy later. Ciao, and good luck if you're taking part! (And if you're not...DOOOOO IIIIIIITTTTTT)

Overall Goals - A Tiny Bit of Progress

Just to let y'all know, I am now "in progress" with two of my long-term goals...and, if all goes as planned, one of them will be the first of my long-term goals to be completed tomorrow! That's sort of exciting (and scary because of the nature of the goal).

One of the goals is the compilation of 100 photos of the town I live in. I started taking pictures of my walk home from school, and so far I have 14 specific pictures of my town compiled in a digital photo album. That's only 86 more to go - I'd call that progress. :) I want to take at least 6 pictures soon so I can get out of the 80's and into the 70's and make some more progress. I hope to take a lot of pictures this summer when I might actually have some TIME.

The other one is a lot scarier. I've always wanted to donate blood, and I got convinced by my high school's Key Club to sign up to donate on Monday. I'm really, really, really scared of needles, and when you get your blood drawn, I think you have to have this huge needle sticking in your arm for a long time. It's not like it'll be over in a second! So I'm sort of nervous. Of course, I also have a test that day (oh, how wonderful), so that's not really helping. I tried to do a little homework that is due Tuesday today, and probably saved myself an hour of homework on Monday night that I can use to rest and recuperate if I need to.

However, if I don't chicken out or die before I can make it to 4th/5th period (depending on which period I end up getting sent to give blood - 5th was my first choice, but 4th is my alternate if 5th is full), that means I'll have a goal completed! That will be my first goal from my long-term list! (And my BFS list, but it's not on it, so I don't count that.)

Hopefully I'll post something tomorrow to tell how it went. I hope I don't pass out. O_O;;

Edit: I don't know if I ever said this, but I ended up getting sick the night before, so I couldn't go to school. And then I couldn't donate any blood! Sigh...and even now, months later, I still haven't donated blood. Oh well...one day I will donate blood and help others! Really!

February Ended a Little While Ago...

Alright, so I had a February...and some of March. Here is where I am with my goals for this year!

Overall goal: 5/10 of specific BFS goals:

Key:

- Not Started

- In Progress

- Completed

- Failed

1. Two novel drafts - 0/2 - Alright, so I'm about 17k into one draft, but not much farther. I'm going to put this on hold because...
2. Script Frenzy '08 - Three weeks away from this one! I've started planning (I'll talk about that in a separate post), and I'm really excited. I want to win so badly - I'm going with an outline this year. :P
3. Regular exercising (twice a week) - 0/100 workouts - Still...have...no...time...
4. Regular journaling (seven pages per week) - I'm not just on track to finish, but I'm on track to have a surplus of pages by the end of the year! Each week, with the exception of one in January (I believe), I've usually written my seven pages all on Sunday night, then written two pages per evening after that. Yup. I like my current journal - it appears small, so it's easy to fill up. :D
5. Regular creative writing (one piece per week) - 3/50 pieces, 1/12 accompanying images - I think I've written more than three, but I know I'm way behind. I should really date these things...one day, I'm just going to sit down and write, like, ten little short things. But not this day! -_-;;
6. One contest + one submission - I cheated. :P I realized, when posting this, that I had not yet submitted anything. So I went and submitted "Jippa" to my school's literary magazine. I should really EDIT something and submit it to a contest...and I guess it won't be "Jippa". I'm thinking "Prologue to Coffee", or maybe something a bit more...dramatic...
7. More socializing - 6/40 events - Thanks to prom dress shopping, I've added three events to this, all from one weekend. Heck yes!...? Again, I really don't keep track of this very well, so I could have had more.
8. "Progress" - I really don't know about this one. I've given up on That Person, but I asked a different guy to prom (he said he couldn't go). So should I count that as progress? I think I'll just ponder this one at the end of the year, since it's so badly defined.
9. More studying/earlier start on homework/"good grades" - Another badly-defined one. On one hand, I have been "finishing" my homework by 11:00 pm consistently for the past week/two weeks/maybe more. Yet, I don't know if my grades are good enough. Again, I'll ponder this one later.
10. Summer job - I'm really sad to say this, but I did not get the job. Instead, I'm going to take summer school to get ahead a semester for one period next year. It's sad. :(

Total:

- Not started: 3

- In Progress: 6

- Completed: 0

- Failed: 1

So that means I'm on track to complete 6/10 and win my personal challenge!

S'more Goal Things

Well, I started taking some pictures of my hometown! :) I walk home from school and generally seem to carry my camera around a lot. I have to go through all my pictures, but so far, I think I have ten photos put together. So that's a start! I'm trying to brainstorm some more pictures to take. I definitely want to go to the university nearby and take some pictures, as well as more from around my school, downtown, midtown, and the area I like to call "uptown" (though nobody really ever calls it that).

I also want to add these goals to my list - I want 50 goals! It's such a nice number, but I'm afraid that once I have 50, I won't want to add any more. :P Oh, and I know I've donated waaaaay more than 100 grains of rice through playing FreeRice (www.freerice.com), but I've only donated 100 since I started counting. So yeah. And a bunch of these are stolen from other people...eheheh.

Also, for the books - these are books I started reading for a school assignment and never finished, instead using SparkNotes or class discussions to get the information I needed. So far, this has only been The House of the Seven Gables by Nathanial Hawthorne (I found it boring and unapproachable, so I gave up 30 pages in) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (I loved this book, just got lazy 30 pages from the end - this one should be a fun reread). I want to let my guilty conscience rest by seriously reading them and then writing my thoughts on the book down somewhere, be it here, my journal, or somewhere else.

As for the states one...well, my home is the USA, but the USA is so diverse! I want to be able to experience all of it at some time. I want to also make a collection of photos to prove I'd been in each state! Haha, what is it with me and photos recently? (Unfortunately, this means I'll have to revisit a BUNCH of states! I only have a few states' photos on my computer right now...I've been to many, many states, but I didn't take that many pictures, so all I have are pictures from California, Utah, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.)

TRAVEL:

- Visit every state in the USA, and have photographic evidence of each state (state photos compiled: 4/50)

HEALTH/PERSONAL:

- Actually read the books I said I would finish for school but never did, and then write some sort of follow-up (books read: 0/2, mini-reports written: 0/2)

IMPRESSION:

- Donate 1,000,000 grains of rice through FreeRice (grains donated: 100/1,000,000)

- Pay for a stranger's meal anonymously.

CRAZY:

- Show up at an airport with money, passport, and a luggage bag, and take the first flight I can.

Quantification and Progress: January Has Ended!

Alright, so since it is now February 1...I figure I might as well revisit my "resolutions" for the Big/Fun/SCARY 2008 we are now 1/12 through. That's about 8.33%. It feels like it should be more. (Grr.)

Anyway, I was going to look at my goals and see how I've been doing - but then I realized that a lot of these goals are things I want to become habitual. And that's not really measurable...so I'm going to add some quantification stuff for each of 'em that roughly gives me the amount of stuff I want for the whole year.

So here are my ten goals for the year, along with new added numbery things for some of them, as well as my progress on all of 'em:

(Key:

Not started

In progress

Completed)

1. Two novel drafts - 0/2 - I have started a novel draft (Dreamland) and am about 5k words into it, and have been planning a second and third novel.
2. Script Frenzy '08 - Screnzy is still two months away, so I haven't done much for this except vaguely think about a possible screenplay idea. :)
3. Regular exercising (twice a week) - 0/100 workouts - Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to go to the gym...thanks to finals and school!
4. Regular journaling (seven pages per week) - So far, I've either met or surpassed my quota for each calendar week. Since this is an all-or-nothing goal, I've been meeting it.
5. Regular creative writing (one piece per week) - 1/50 pieces, 1/12 accompanying images - I started out okay, but then sort of fell out of the writing groove...I need to write more short things! But I WILL do some this month, I promise!
6. One contest + one submission - So far, I've done neither, but I'd like to have the submission out of the way either this month or next month.
7. More socializing - 3/40 events - I actually had a huge scheduling conflict this month! I had to turn down one event to go to another. :) So far, I've gotten together with friends three times outside of school, which is meeting my three-per-month, and am going to something tomorrow, so that's good. Yup yup.
8. "Progress" - Unfortunately, this is still an abstract goal, and my name is still not known. I've gotten depressed over this, and I had a chance (sort of) to talk or something, but I didn't take it. I might sort of give up/put this on hold until a new person comes along. I don't like to think about it, really. :(
9. More studying/earlier start on homework/"good grades" - Again, I really don't know how to measure this one. Last week was good - I was on top of my work (more or less) and actually got a fair amount of sleep (though not an amazing amount). We haven't taken any tests yet this semester, but finals were horrible. Not entirely my fault on that, though.
10. Summer job - Well, I was super on top of the interview (I was early to plan it, early to take it!), and am basically guaranteed a job there. :) I just have to wait to hear what my position is, and then go through the rest of the process to get it (like...work permit, fingerprinting, planning, yadda yadda). The next phase will be when I am doing the job and taking advantage of it to the fullest!

Not started - 5

In progress - 5

Completed - 0

And that's my progress for January! :D I hope to maybe add one more goal to the "in progress" category during either this month or March, the mostly being Script Frenzy if it turns out I can use it for my English final project (in which case I'd get started and do the whole writing process, including prewriting stuff). Or maybe I'll get a submission to the literary magazine in my school done. Hmm. I wonder? Well, it'll be exciting to see where I am at the end of the month in any case! (At least I'm on track to get my "5/10 completed" goal for the end of the year...kinda sorta.)

:)