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!