Fizzly Imagination

Gah, English

2010-06-23T19:02:00.000-07:00

So I'm currently taking summer classes at a college I don't go to during the rest of the school year (and is on the opposite side of the country as where I normally live), and we're not supposed to speak English...

And even though it's only been a week and a half, I am going crazy from the lack of communication. Maybe doing an immersion-course like this for LEVEL 1 FREAKING MANDARIN was a bad idea. Hehe. Whoops. (Sometimes I think my life is just one bad idea after another.)

Although, I HAVE wanted to take Mandarin, since, like, forever.

Actually - wait. Scratch that. I rarely ever want to take a language class. I want to speak languages. The taking the classes is just the unfortunate method in which one learns secondary language. I actually really don't like class...homework...ugh and the early start times. I honestly thought I'd never have to go back to 7:50 am class once I graduated from high school, since most colleges don't have classes before 9 - 8, if they really must.

But 7:50? Really? Why do they even care about the extra ten minutes - from my own personal psychological point of view, having a time that begins with an "8" feels way, way, way later (and more humane) than one that begins with a "7"...even if the difference is only 10 minutes.

Sigh. I wish I could have a summer vacation like everyone else! But like I said before, my life = a string of bad decisions. Though I suppose if I can speak Mandarin at some level at the end of this, it'll seem a lot better in hindsight. I just have, like, 7 1/2 more weeks to go.

I should really be studying - I still have to memorize two dialogues and a shit ton of vocab words for tomorrow, and since I bombed today's vocab test, I should probably get on that. Ugh, I can't wait until we can stop writing stupid pinyin on the quizzes - like, I know that you should know both the pinyin and the characters, but it's so much easier for me to remember how to write characters than pinyin, thanks to the dumb tones.

I miss Japanese and its monotone phonetic system :( Hell, I miss ITALIAN and its monotone phonetic system. Mi piace italiano perchè italiano ha un sistema fonetico senza toni. Adesso voglio studiare italiano! (Though I would prefer Japanese, I think. So far, Japanese has been the easiest language for me to study, though that might have just been because of the other people in my Japanese and Italian classes skewing my perception of how well/badly I actually was doing. I think I actually learned more Italian in one academic year than I learned of Japanese in twice or three times that amount of time.)

I really want to write, but this is SUCH a bad place to do something like that - even this (pointless?) blog post is kind of "against the rules". Especially since even when I don't write, I still space out all the time and think up characters and situations and epic battles and what not.

Anyway, I should go shower and study and SLEEP, since I have to get up at 6:45, eat breakfast, and sit through 4 hours of class before lunch. (FMySummer.)

What I Like to Write

2010-05-16T00:28:00.000-07:00

Well hey there, writing blog. Since I wrote a post on Wednesday, I felt like I should write another one this week to account for the fact that my last post prior to Wednesday's was back in August.

I mean, really, a whole YEAR of school (minus two weeks of class, reading week, and a finals week that I won't be here for) has gone by since that post. Geesh.

Anyway, since even though I'm not really going to have any "writing time" this summer, on account of the fact that I'm going to be in an immersion environment for a Chinese language class I'll be taking (for 9 weeks...), I really want to start writing again. I've been trying to at least keep a journal during the year, but I really miss fiction, and now that it's clear that I'll never be able to take a creative writing class at my university...

Well, I guess I just need to get myself to do it on my own!

(I'm still hoping that I'll be able to take a non-degree creative writing class at a community college or something some time in my life. Because obviously, semi-prestigious research universities only want future prize-winning poets for their creative writing program. And I despise poetry if I have to study it for more than a week. Grumblegrumble.)

So, because I'm not sure what else to blog about, I'm going to post a list of five things I like to read/write!

Happy and/or hopeful endings - I hate sad endings. Bittersweet endings are fine, especially hopeful ones. If someone is optimistic or at least willing to work to a better future, I'm fine. But sad endings? NO. I KILL DEM.
Fun characters with good voices - I think this is why I like Meg Cabot...but yeah, I get bored with cardboard characters, so I try to avoid them (and improve when I accidentally write them!)
Creative fantasy settings - I like creative settings, especially ones that aren't the standard Medieval Western Europe high fantasy
Contemporary characters - I think I connect better when things are more contemporary
Adventures - I like adventure! I don't know why :P

Things I'm okay with:

Fantasy violence - I'm cool with fantasy violence. Realistic violence is a little too real. (Duh?)
Romance - I was going to put romance in the previous list, but then I realized that I actually get put off by main-plot romances, since I sometimes find it hard to relate. And on that note...
Gay guy pairs - I like reading about gay guys, but I hate writing them because I have issues with writing guys. Gay guy pairs intimidate me because there are TWO OF THEM, and I don't want to be stereotypical and make them feminine, because I know a ton of gay guys who are about as feminine as I want to study engineering. Plus, I suck at writing romances...
Medieval Europe high fantasy settings - mehhhhhhh whatever. I'm kind of tired of Tolkien wannabes, and I've read enough Tolkien wannabes to be wary of anything that has a Medieval Europe-based high fantasy setting
All female/all male casts - either too much estrogen or testosterone, depending on which gender you pick, but if they're well written, I guess I'm okay with it...sometimes

And things I hate:

Suicide - I think suicide is really disturbing, and I really don't like thinking about it when I don't have to (ie in fiction). This is especially true when it's the main character who commits suicide
Violence against animals - I really don't like violence against animals because I feel like it is twice as unfair as violence against other humans is, since the animal has no choice in the matter and is at a major disadvantage due to the whole brain thing. Humorous violence against animals will probably ruin an entire book/movie for me
Never ending plots - seriously, if you're not going to start something with an end in mind, don't start it yet. It doesn't work, and just really makes me lose respect for the author and their inability to structure a story well
Depressing endings - I don't like depressing things...since I like being happy! Yay, happiness?
"Didn't I already read this?" - super derivative stories. Um...why should I read you if I've already read the exact same book/watched the exact same movie by someone else?

I'm not actually dead

2010-05-12T00:04:00.001-07:00

Well hey there, old blog I never update anymore.

This is probably because I'm in college, but whatever.

I don't really write much anymore, which is kind of a shame...but I still, of course, have an extremely overactive imagination that probably keeps me from paying attention in classes in which I should be focusing on. ;)

Anyway, I did NaNo this year and won, and I did Script Frenzy and lost (though I think I got a little over halfway, so it wasn't like I TOTALLY failed. I also completed a script version of the second book in The Eleventh with what I had for Screnzy, so again - not a total loss). I probably won't be able to win NaNo in the fall, but I'm damn well going to try to get as far as possible. I'll only consider myself a failure if I can't hit more than 10,000 words - otherwise, I'll just be a loser. (And I'd always rather be a loser than a loser AND a failure.)

I'm not really sure what the point of this blog post was...

Oh, but as per usual, I've had some crazy dreams this year. Unlike some, I have crazy dreams kind of regardless of what I may or may not be ingesting - I do not need strange substances to be uselessly creative. I say "uselessly" because unlike creative people who use their creativity to solve problems and cure disease and whatnot, I just have weird dreams about:

Adorable parasitic worms that latch onto your pinky finger and can guide you through underground tunnel networks
Arranged marching band-based and sorority-based marriages that really don't make sense (and when I say they really don't make sense, I mean they REALLY don't make sense)
Giant trolls drop-kicking me off cliffs during a fairy tale simulation
Magic hamsters that grow into cat-like creatures and are targeted by an organization that probably is evil in some way
Huns murdering and impersonating my friends, and then nobody but me noticing
Trying to escape people in Chinese restaurants that are also trains
Participating in a play in which I have to act drunk so that the audience won't notice my friends stealing all the pastries in the back (but really - if they were watching a play anyway, wouldn't they not be looking in the back of the auditorium already?)

There really is nothing like a strange, adventurous dream. I wish I remembered more of the dreams I had. Some of them were ridiculously entertaining after the fact.

Taken from my Facebook notes: Response to Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman

2009-08-20T01:29:00.000-07:00

So I finished Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman for summer reading (since everyone in my seminar HAS to read it).

And...I kind of want to know how true everything he says is. I mean, he sounds convincing, but I don't want to just blindly believe everything he says because it just sounds TOO easy.

Even though it's not.

(Floods will be more common and more severe if we don't start working to alleviate climate change.)

Does anybody get what I mean? That you can pretty much say that saving the climate, preserving our planet's biodiversity, helping our national security, promoting growth in third world countries, taking down petrodictators, and other good things is economically viable in the long run? (Or maybe not THAT long...I didn't get this as much because I don't know much about economics.) That, and it's all interconnected and related to improving our energy system/pushing clean energy? AND it would give us a chance to NOT surrender "the next big industry" to China/India/another emerging giant?

Because (according to Thomas Friedman, who - by the way - I don't think I agree with on all of his points), if we do things like promote a tax on imported oil (or all oil...)/carbon emissions in general, create harsher emission standards (like for transportation), as well as make it easier for people to invest in solar/wind/nuclear/wave/etc R+D/production, it will:
- Promote a cleaner environment
- Spark competition between companies to become more "green", which will end up saving them money in fuel and become a selling point for when they want to hire people ("come work for us! Look at how green we are!")
- Spark capitalistic competition: for example, between automakers. Contrary to their whining, harsher emission standards does NOT cause automakers to go out of business.
- Encourage American alternative energy companies to stay American and not focus on foreign markets
- Keep American taxes going into projects that help the USA (coughcough not the Middle East)
- Help our national security (ie we don't have to bow down to oil-producers)
- Help our TROOPS
- Show a good example to the rest of the world, ESPECIALLY developing countries who want to "live an American lifestyle"
- Give us a foothold against cheap Chinese/Indian companies by preventing them from selling products that would not meet our higher carbon emission standards. Which would, in turn, force China/India to create their OWN higher standards to compete with American companies, (and so on) which would be better for the world...
- Help develop technology that could provide power to developing countries and villages, making it easier for people to stay in villages and not cram into unhealthy, overcrowded city slums. This would make it easier for people to get into the middle class AND would allow these people to focus on education rather than pure survival, which would increase the numbers of innovators

And other things...

(We can prevent urban decay and environmental decay at the same time.)

I mean, there are a ton of things standing in the way, such as the fact that a lot of the governmental bodies controlling various aspects of our energy policies aren't under the same roof - in order to get a central energy policy, you need to go to the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, the EPA, the Department of Transportation, the US Army Corp of Engineers, etc. In that sense, China has a much easier way of implementing a clean energy system than we do...except that China isn't really doing that, either.

There's a lot to say about this, but I don't want to rant. I just want to say a couple things I found interesting (assuming everything Thomas Friedman says in his book is 100% true):

One thing...our troops. (Esp the ones in Iraq/Afghanistan.) Let's look at Iraq. Now, I don't support the Iraq war...but I do support our troops (as people). I admire that they are putting their lives on the line to protect us back home. I would like it if as few of them died in Iraq as possible, and I'm glad President Obama is withdrawing a lot of the troops.

What's really sad, I always think, is when a soldier dies in Iraq because of something like a car bomb. They weren't doing anything at the moment, and they just get killed. Or when they're doing something mundane...like transporting diesel. Why diesel? Because it's really hot in Iraq (like 121 degrees Fahrenheit), and the encampments can't use the Iraqi grid for energy to run their many air conditioners. For a long time, soldiers had to truck in so many gallons of diesel to run the ACs, and these soldiers in their diesel-transporting trucks would be easy, flammable targets for IEDs (improvised explosive devices). The US Army had to spend time, energy, and lives to make sweep roads of IEDs and send soldiers to truck in the diesel to run the ACs.

So the Army wanted to cut down on the amount of energy they used. Makes sense, right? They were able to save 40-75 percent on their energy usage just by insulating the tents with foam. They built on that design (using the foam insulation) to build large, domed temporary structures with that insulation, the capacity to sleep 40 soldiers (4x the average army tent), more ballistic protection thanks to the concrete in the design, and 2 mobile wind turbines and 2 sun-tracking solar panels in addition to a backup generator. Thanks to the wind turbines and solar panels (and the insulation), the tents can produce enough energy to provide power, air conditioning, and have a bit left over to give to a nearby village.

As of when the book was written, I don't think those structures have been implemented in Iraq or Afghanistan (since it needed to be perfected), but it's a good start. As Friedman said, you "buy one, get four free". You spend the money on the efficient structures, and you:
- Save lives by getting the diesel convoys off the road
- Save money by lowering fuel costs
- Might be able to give some extra energy to a nearby village, which might make the people in the village less angry at the occupying soldiers
- Might make the soldiers demand the same kind of energy-saving practices in factories/buildings in America once they come home. The same thing happened when the army was desegregated - why can't it happen now with energy policies?

(The above was summarized from the beginning of the chapter entitled "Outgreening Al-Qaeda")

So yeah...

There are a lot of interesting things to think about, like how if you don't focus so much on the "we need to save the polar bears"-type attitude and focus more on the "we need to save money and promote a healthy national economy"-type attitude, you end up saving the polar bears because more people will be on board.

Another chapter I thought was interesting was about how to get poor communities on board with "the green revolution". If somebody can't afford their house, they won't care about saving the polar bears. But if you put money into education and create entry-level "green-collar jobs" (such as working in a manufacturing plant for solar panels - which could lead to being a manager, which could lead to being an innovator, and which would be the stepping-stone factory job of the present), then you would stabilize more people. If people don't have to worry about feeding their families and getting evicted, then they can worry about the polar bears. And if you can kill the poverty bird and the disappearing-biodiversity bird with one stone? Um, why not?

(The passages about "green-collar jobs" are in the same chapter as above: "Outgreening Al-Qaeda")

So yeah.

(I don't know about everyone else, but I think this is worth protecting.)

It kind of seems too easy, this "saving the world" thing. Like if we have a good energy policy, too many things will just fit into place, and like how if we tell people that preserving the forests in Sumatra is more economically viable than cutting it down, we can both help developing economies and alleviate the strain on our planet. But it also seems so impossible, because this sort of thing CAN'T happen in the US government right now, and it HAS to.

I mean, I hate to be patriotic, but we NEED to be one of the countries moving forward into a clean energy system. Japan and Europe are already getting there and leaving us behind, which isn't THAT much of a problem right now - but what if China and India get there first? Then we would get left behind as China (or India) would become the new world power, and while that might be great for the Chinese - I'm American. I'm a plain, boring, whitebread American girl. While yeah, I wouldn't mind China becoming a clean energy giant, I want my own country to do well, too.

Because if we can jump ahead in our energy policy and create an economy that China can't compete in, China will find a way to compete. If we become green, China will want to become greener - India, too. And Japan. And Europe. And Indonesia, and everybody else. "Anything you can green, I can green better."

It's a competition that we can't lose - but, even though it's a competition, everyone has the potential to win.

...

But it's not happening, which sucks.

...Wow, that was long. Did that make any sense to anyone, or is it just late-night ramblings from a girl that doesn't really understand economics as much as the Palo Alto School District would have wanted her to? :)

(Sunsets are beautiful. Let's have the sun continue to set on a planet that's just as beautiful.)

Hey there, summer goals.

2009-08-03T23:09:00.001-07:00

Okay, so...due to the fact that yesterday I finished my 11th chick lit book (which would be Queen of Babble in the Big City by the glorious Meg Cabot) and on Friday I got my DRIVER'S LICENSE, I'm going to do a little bit of a self-check on those summer goals I made back in June...

1. Write a novel - workin' on it...both...both of them. I started both of them before summer, but I figure that if I finish one by the end of summer (one of them looks like it will finish up by the end of August) and if I write a combined total of, like, 50,000+ words, I'll be good.
2. Go to the city on the train with my friends - ...man, I really need to do this...
3. Get my driver's license - OH HEY WHAT GUESS WHAT I HAVE. YEAH THAT'S RIGHT, I HAVE a piece of paper, since my actual license card still has to get mailed to me...but I WILL get it, and I'm sure the cops will be fine with my piece-of-paper interim license, so YEAH WHAT WHAT.
4. Watch a sunrise - ...maybe now that I have my DRIVER'S LICENSE, this will actually happen.
5. Take a picture under Hoover Tower - I seriously cannot believe Janice and I never did this. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH US.
6. Read at least 11 brainless chick lit books - uh-huhhhhhh did this. :)
7. See Janice - OH HAY DID THIS TOO.
8. Clean my room - um, this is kind of vague...every time I clean it, it just gets dirty again.
9. Practice flute at least sometimes - I swear I'll do this.
10. Make sure to coordinate me-Cally-Brandy-Anna stuff so it actually HAPPENS - well, Cally-Anna-me stuff has happened, as well as Cally-me, Anna-me, and Brandy-me (ONCE), but all four? Hehe. Oops.
11. To get some sort of thing made to represent/remember "home" with - ummmmm...

So that's a grand total of...

In progress: 2

Done: 3

Not even started: 6

Now, I know the "not even started"s outnumber the "in progress"es and the "done"s (combined), but hey...it's summer?

Oh, and I actually have homework due the first day of class. Or, actually, the second day of class, since my seminar meets on Tuesdays, not Mondays. BUT STILL. Homework. Ew. (I should probably get started on that, too. I mean, I've read one chapter of one book, but...yeah. I need to do my homework.)

I hate wisdom teeth removal. End of story.

2009-07-23T23:55:00.000-07:00

My mouth huuuuuuurts.

And it totally makes me not want to write anything, even though I should be working on those stories I wanted to finish this summer (which will probably happen for one of them, but not so much the other...ALTHOUGH I HAVE IT OUTLINED hahahahaaaaaaa yeah).

Instead, what have I been doing?

I've been watching illegally-uploaded-to-YouTube Kim Possible episodes. And ANIME. (In my defense for the anime, it was only four episodes (so far...since it's new) and it's from the only series I'd bother watching nowadays...and that's just because it was the inspiration for The Eleventh.)

...I have no defense for Kim Possible, though...haha, it was kind of cool since I didn't know they made a fourth season, so there are TONS of episodes I've never watched. Like...Kim and Ron? TOGETHER? SERIOUSLY? Didn't think they were gonna make a whole season with that! But they did.

Although I gotta say, I did like Ron/Yori... :( But they weren't "meant to be", like I guess Kim and Ron are (no duh, right?) Drakken/Shego kind of freaks me out now, though, even though I think I used to think they would be cute together. But that was when I was ten. Now that I think about it, it's kind of...disturbing. And they only have one real "moment" together - personally, I think Shego would be better of with someone else. And Drakken, but I can't think of anybody in the show who'd be good for him. I can with Shego, though.

But enough about that.

(Though I gotta add: FELIX/ZITA! Aaaaah adorable, adorable, ADORABLE! Also, Junior/Bonnie...hahaha, wow, they are perfect together.)

So yep.

I'm not even reading chick lit...I'm watching Kim Possible. DID YOU KNOW THAT SKY HIGH AND KIM POSSIBLE WERE WRITTEN/CREATED BY THE SAME PEOPLE? I did not know that, but now that I do, it kind of explains a lot. And Mister Barkin was voiced by Patrick Warburton! Hahaaaaaaa wow!

...So, um, why did I write this, again?

The Ramifications of Chick Lit

2009-07-09T00:48:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm currently ~15 pages from finishing one of the two chick lit books I checked out when I went to the library again today (but forgot to bring one of the books back that I'd checked out before - oops!), and even though I was going to go to bed before midnight in an effort to shift myself back to a normal sleep schedule...I got sucked in and I couldn't stop reading! I have to finish it tonight.

So why am I writing this?

It's because I'm reading The Cinderella Pact by Sarah Strohmeyer, which is partly about three woman vowing to lose weight and keep it off (therefore becoming sexier and happier and healthier and yadda yadda) in six months. And it's got me all enthusiastic to try the same thing, even though I'm not obese.

Or, like, I'm not obese but sometimes I FEEL obese. And not just the "ohmigod I just looked in the mirror and I'm SO UGLY why would anybody associate with me" kind of "I feel obese" because I'm pretty sure everybody feels like that. Or, at least, everybody who is female. You know. Mirror phobia and all that. (Or camera phobia for those of us who aren't ridiculously photogenic without trying...or at all...)

It's more like...I just feel heavy. And flabby. Like it's restricting my movement, weighing me down, giving me an unflattering figure, and making me breath harder just to do something normal. It's not like I don't work out - I started going to the gym again, so hopefully that'll help - but it's like...I dunno. I don't like it, though, cuz I don't FEEL good. Screw looks - this is something else.

So I'll cut to the chase: I have a "curvy tummy" as they say in Seventeen magazine, and it's getting in my way. I don't want this tummy! I want - er, well, I would LIKE abs of steel, but I don't think "abs of steel" and "Anne Ciccarelli" will ever go together - but I want something that doesn't feel like its weighing me down and splashing out everywhere. Especially now with all the fashions - they're so flowy around the middle and cinched at the waist. A curvy tummy does not work with these! So it's like I can never go to a store and buy something. I'm a bad shopper, but like, I got a gift card for Anthropologie and I really wanted to get something...

But nothing looked good! And while it wasn't ALL because of my curvy tummy - some of them just didn't work with my wide shoulders or were just kind of weirdly shaped to begin with - it doesn't help!

Then I went to Gap and saw a dress I LOVED. It's like my number one sin - dress lust. Seriously. I LOVE LOVE LOVE dresses, but I can never wear them without feeling like everyone's judging me or that they only show off the worst parts of me.

BUT I LOVED THIS DRESS. They had it in two colors, and I think I liked the two-tone brown one better, but the navy-and-black one was cute, too. I mean, if I could just find some cute brown flats, I could totally wear that brown dress! (Or I could just use black flats I own from band and wear the blue-black one...)

Except it was the absolute WORST kind of dress for my curvy tummy. I couldn't even try the stupid thing ON, even in the seclusion of the dressing room. I could just stare at it and luuuuuuust. It's like prom season all over again. I stare at dresses, but I never get to wear them. The last time I bought a dress that I actually WORE was for homecoming in FRIGGIN NINTH GRADE.

So I've decided!

Enough of not wearing dresses! Or, at least, not having a good tummy for dresses!

I want that brown dress! (Or the blue-black one, since I already have shoes for it.)

So...I don't know how...but I'm going to kill the curvy tummy. Or at least get it under control. I'm going to start each day by doing crunches until it kills me (er...maybe I'll just start off with 20 and work my way up...) And I'll do push-ups, too, although that won't help the tummy. But it can't hurt, right? And I'll keep going to the gym. Maybe I'll run in the morning OUTSIDE (I've never had enough confidence to do this since I can't run for more than fifteen minutes on a treadmill).

I dunno.

But I want that dress. Even if it has a 99.9999% of being horribly out-of-fashion in like, two weeks...I don't care. I at least want to be able to walk into freaking GAP and try on a dress I think looks cute.

Because I want to be able to wear a dress. :) Screw prom and Cinderella fantasies, a casual one will work just fine.

(Okay, now I'm going to go finish that book and GO TO SLEEP because it is waaaay past my bedtime. And crap, I should have written this in my journal...I wonder how long it'll be before I cave and just print out blogs and things? Haha. I'm just a fast typer! Can't deny that. :) Anyway...even though nobody reads this but me...bye bye! Sleep tight. I'll dream of myself in a beautiful dress I'll never wear tonight.)

About that novel...

2009-07-06T23:51:00.001-07:00

So I decided to be more nostalgic this summer and write an "juvenile" story. Two of them, actually. ;) Of course I won't be posting about them, because they're embarrassing that way. Even though I'm an adult, I guess it's just hard to shake off the kinds of stories I liked to write as a child. After this, I promise I'll write more mature things.

But for now, I'm just gonna have fun and pretend I'm still a kid. I mean, hey, a novel's a novel, bottom line.

It'll be our little secret. ;)

Insomnia and Summer Novels

2009-06-19T02:22:00.001-07:00

Alright, so I still can't fall asleep, so I worked on my novel for this summer...goal number 1. :)

And guess what? It's CHICK LIT! :D Best type of book everrr, even though romance hasn't really started blooming yet. (That's because...I dunno...I don't want to give it away? Actually, it's because I had trouble wrapping up Chapter 3. That's why.)

Yeah, so I'm taking a break from The Eleventh (even though I need to finish the second book) because The Eleventh got so wrapped up in my senior year...I need a break from it, too. I'll finish the draft of the second by the end of the year, and maybe get started on the third if I can (NaNo '09?)...but for now...noooooo. I'm writing harmless chick lit. :P I'm almost 10,000 words in, and although I don't have any outline written (which has me kind of freaking out) I have a good idea of where it's gonna go.

With the exception, of course, of the next few scenes. I think it's going to end up being kind of like Highness in the sense that the first draft is gonna SUCK due to its flailing-about nature, but hopefully it'll be salvageable. Maybe even enjoyable? I'm trying to get a spunky-type female narrator-thing going, since that's what contemporary chick lit is all about. Hopefully I'm succeeding.

Oh, and it's based off of my own experiences (haha, no). It's about a girl named Wendy Phillips who has an overactive imagination that ends up sucking her into movie plots as she watches them, in particular one movie: an action-adventure fantasy type called Glass Flower that stars her best friend's celeb crush. But the guy Wendy ends up falling for isn't the actor her friend adores, but the character himself - the standard charming action hero with the weird name, Cain Leafheart. But Wendy ends up learning that falling in love with someone who's just in her head has more problems than solutions, especially when she begins to lose the overactive imagination that gave her Prince Charming in the first place.

I either want to call it "Overactive Imagination" or "In Your Head"...or something else. I'm having trouble coming up with a title I like. :/ Oh well. I'll call it Overactive Imagination for tagging purposes...even though it's currently In Your Head in the document version. Heheh...working title, much?

But yeah...maybe I'll post the Prologue through Chapter Three here! :) Just for fun. Like a preview! Haha, yeah, I'll do that. (But I'm going to be lazy and not transfer over the italics...because I'm lazy. Hehe, sorry.) Here is the unedited first draft prologue...:

Prologue

I have always had an overactive imagination. It was just something that was a part of me - I personally always blamed it on being an only child with two parents working full-time. Plus, there being three of us, I was sometimes the odd one out. (Yeah, three-way conversations? They don't work.)

So, when my parents were out and I was stuck at home with a babysitter or at that after school program they signed me up for every year, I usually just had to dream up my own adventures to have. It wasn't to say that I didn't have friends, because I totally did. I was actually a really social kid, not "Miss Popular", but high enough up the social ladder to never be in a situation without someone I could be friendly with.

It was just that a lot of times, I was stuck in a situation where either I was by myself, or everyone else around me wasn't being as friendly as they could have been. (This happened a lot if my parents had to drag me to a company dinner or a dinner party with their friends, and I was surrounded by boring adults who would ask me my name, age, and what I wanted to be when I grew up before ignoring me completely.) So I had to make do with what I had, and what I had was my imagination.

It started out innocently enough. First, I had basic imaginary friends. I never had a consistent imaginary friend, I just used whatever was around me. Sometimes it was a stuffed animal, sometimes it was an action figure, and sometimes it was a cloud up in the sky. Then, once I got older and could imagine things in my head, I would think up vague shapes of people to talk to. Eventually, they became clearer and ended up developing personalities, and I sifted through my very large collection until I found a few characters that seemed interesting enough to keep imagining up everyday.

Then I started getting into reading books, seeing movies, and every now and then playing a video game. That, as it turned out, was a mistake just waiting to happen.

As it turned out, my imagination on its own was completely harmless. No matter how real anything was when I imagined it up, it wasn't...you know. Real. It was just a tiny little figment of my imagination that I could throw away at a moment's notice.

But, apparently, my imagination worked synergistically with other people's imaginations. If a book was imaginative enough, suddenly I found myself staring at a vague shape that resembled the main character or villain, and they would only go away once I closed the book. It was the same with games - characters would begin to interact with me outside the screen, only leaving me alone if I turned the console off.

Movies were the worst - as soon as I started watching a movie, it was like I was in the movie. Sometimes my interpretation of the movie plot would end up drastically different than whoever I watched it with because I ended up basically seeing a different movie. (Apparently, adding just one character - namely me - could potentially change a movie from a sad ending to a happy one, as demonstrated when I single-handedly saved both Romeo and Juliet when I saw the 1968 film.) Heck, sometimes I ended up seeing a different movie if I watched the movie a second time.

But it only happened to me, and nothing that happened in the movie was permanent. I think I got killed once when I watched the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and I was fine when the movie ended. That was always what happened - the movie would end, I would wake up from my movie trance, and everything would be normal again. It just made it unbelievably awkward to watch movies with people, since if they turned to talk to me during the movie, I wouldn't respond. In fact, I'd usually just stare up at the screen, my mouth open a little bit, looking a bit like I was about to have a seizure (that was how one of my friends, Nellie, described it).

I mean, it wasn't really much of a problem. I just avoided watching movies, if I could. In class, if we were going to watch a movie, I'd usually find some way to convince my teachers I had to go to the bathroom, health office, library, computer lab, lockers, or, once, across the street for coffee. And some movies weren't even worth trying to get out of, so I'd just watch them anyway. (If it got bad, sometimes I could close my eyes and avoid getting sucked into it.) I also learned that if I avoided big screens and dark viewing rooms, I could "snap out of it" much easier - so movie theaters became off-limits to me. I didn't care, though, since I had enough luck to land a group of friends that put shopping and trips to the beach before movies.

Really, though, it wasn't anything I ever had to tell anyone. It was just an overactive imagination that didn't go away when I hit puberty, like all my friends. So I kept it all through high school, and as I entered my senior year, I had just sort of gotten used to it.

Unfortunately, that was the year my overactive imagination got the better of me.

Which really sucked, because I had to focus on college apps and not failing my calculus class.

But whatever - it was nothing I, Wendy Yui Nakamura-Phillips, couldn't handle.

(Except the calculus thing. Oh my god, derivatives. HOW DO YOU DO THEM?)

The nice guy...

2009-06-19T00:48:00.000-07:00

Okay, so you know how in romance novels/movies, there is usually a love triangle? And in this triangle, there is the "safe guy" and the "dangerous guy"? And how a lot of times, the dangerous one wins because the heroine just doesn't feel excited enough when she's with the safe one EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE PERFECT FOR EACH OTHER?

Like...Twilight. Now, I'm going purely off the first book/movie (since that's the only one I've seen/read), but Edward is definitely Mr. Dangerous and Jacob is Mr. Safe. GUESS WHO WINS? GUESS WHO IS PERFECT FOR BELLA BUT LOSES ANYWAY?

(I think I am one of those people referred to as "Team Jacob"...but seriously! Who wouldn't want to hang out with a bunch of werewolves? Werewolves are super cool! Especially when the other choice is a family of dead people who watch you sleep.)

So...I finished one of the books I checked out of the library (part of the eleven chick lit books I am reading for my summer goals), and guess what? Mr. Safe won! I was so worried Lindsey would end up ditching Michael for Dustin, but SHE DIDN'T! That made me so happy in only a way that chick lit can. Aaaaaah...this is why I love summer.

(What was the point of this blog post again?)

(Also: why am I tagging this as a rant? This is a pathetic excuse for a rant. But whatever, it's my blog, I can do what I want. I feel like I've said this already...)

Summer goals?

2009-06-18T18:31:00.000-07:00

So before, when I made my summer goals, I said that I was going to read more chick lit. Yesterday I went to the library to check out some chick lit, and ended up getting four books ("the Asian one", "the Southern cooking one", "the amnesia one", and "the one written by one of the cowriters of the movie Legally Blonde"). I'm now about 2/3 of the way done with one of them ("the Asian one"), so hopefully that one will go up on the master list of chick lit I've read soon. (Hopefully then followed by the other three in a timely manner, since I have to turn all of them back in on July 15).

I think that was the first time I'd used my library card in at least a year - maybe more...I was sort of afraid it wasn't going to work (the library card, I mean). I'm so bad, I never go to the library.

Actually, that's not true. I went to the library a bunch of times over the past year, but that was as a meeting place to work on projects with people. I don't think I ever checked out any books. I want to say the last time I checked out books was sometime during junior year when I was working on that project about Robert Fulton and Eli Whitney with Melanie. (I think that was when I had to replace my library card so I could check out those books and do research at home.)

Luckily, the card worked, and I was able to use those self-checkout things so I didn't have to interact with anyone. Plus, those machines are kind of fun. :P Yup...

I really should use the library more often...hahaha. Libraries are cool. You don't have to pay money but you get to read all the books you want. And those books don't end up cluttering up your room and taking up space. (In case you couldn't tell, I'm trying to go through my stuff in my room and get rid of a lot of it before I go off to college.)

So yeah...what was the point of this blog post again?

Summer 2009: Chick Lit

2009-06-15T23:15:00.000-07:00

So I said I would read at least 11 chick lit books this summer. Here is a list of the 11 books I have read so far, and the day I finished them (roughly...some of them are guesswork):

1. Airhead by Meg Cabot - 6/13

2. Being Nikki by Meg Cabot - 6/14

3. Buddha Baby by Kim Wong Keltner - 6/19

4. Deep Dish by Mary Kay Andrews - (estimated) 6/23

5. The Bachelorette Party by Karen McCullah Lutz - 7/5

6. Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella - 7/6

7. The Cinderella Pact by Sarah Strohmeyer - 7/9

8. Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella - (estimated) 7/14

9. The Sleeping Beauty Proposal by Sarah Strohmeyer - 7/27

10. Queen of Babble by Meg Cabot - 8/1

11. Queen of Babble in the Big City by Meg Cabot - 8/2

Still need to read: 0

DONE! :)

In lieu of BFS...

2009-06-15T23:04:00.000-07:00

Here are 11 personal goals for this summer. Because you know how I feel about the number 11. ;)

(These goals, except for #3 and #4, are made up on the spot, by the way.)

1. Write a novel - because hey, why not?
2. Go to the city on the train with my friends - because I still haven't done this.
3. Get my driver's license - because I need to.
4. Watch a sunrise - because I still want to...
5. Take a picture under Hoover Tower - because I forgot to.
6. Read at least 11 brainless chick lit books - because that was how many books/plays I read in entirety in AP English this year, and, of course, it is conveniently my new favorite number.
7. See Janice - because I do it every summer, and I know it's a goal I'll make.
8. Clean my room - because I told my mother I would...
9. Practice flute at least sometimes - because I won't be quitting in college, apparently...
10. Make sure to coordinate me-Cally-Brandy-Anna stuff so it actually HAPPENS - because I don't want to not see them all at once this summer.
11. To get some sort of thing made to represent/remember "home" with - because I'll be leaving it.

Yep...

Google Doc Novel(s)

2009-06-14T14:19:00.001-07:00

Alright, so earlier this year I had a problem. That problem came in the form of a 4th period Writer's Craft "workshop day", where we were to work on our final projects which were due the following week.

Now, I was a good girl, and I had loaded my notes and things onto a USB memory stick so I could work on it at school. Little did I know that USB memory sticks were too much the things of the future, and that the computers I would be using were old and decrepit.

In fact, they were too old and decrepit to be able to read my USB memory stick (that was shaped like a cute little surfboard with a Hawaiian-type hibiscus-type flowery print that was sort of flaking off). So I couldn't work on my creative writing final project...

And I was so incredibly bored.

I also realized that I didn't have any novel stored on Google Docs - I just had stuff emailed to myself. But I didn't have my NOTES emailed to me, and therefore couldn't work on the excerpt I decided I was going to turn in. (Which is lame and totally not topping Fairy Tale and grrrr yeah I know I already talked about this but it's my blog so I get to do what I want.)

So I've decided to start a chick-lit novel on Google Docs so that if I am ever stuck in that sort of situation again, I can at least work on SOMETHING.

It's also different enough from The Eleventh that I can use it if I want to work on something in between books, I can. (Even though I'm starting it now, when I'm not done with the draft of the second "book" yet. So I'm actually being a hypocrite.)

OH BUT I FOUND SOMETHING EXCITING.

It's a book called "The Hunger Games". I haven't actually read it, but I've heard it mentioned enough times to assume that it's selling. Which is GOOD, because I read a plot synopsis and it sounds reminiscent of The Eleventh (you know, about a bunch of kids killing each other, but with a story behind it and a happyish ending). So...you know...if it's doing well, then maybe if I one day publish The Eleventh, it might have a chance! Maybe!

Hey, it's publishing. A "maybe" is good enough for me, since I might not even ever get to get PUBLISHED, much less do well.

But I was thinking. Since I'm writing a chick-lit novel on Google Docs, and I think chick-lit might be a more lucrative area (or at least one that's a bit less embarrassing to tell to my classmates...maybe...), what if I one day became an author...with two names! One could be my real name, and that could be where I would write chick-lit, and the other could be an androgynous (a la JK Rowling) pen name under which I would write science fiction or fantasy or whatever the hell I wanted.

Dunno if that would actually work...

But at least if people asked me what sort of books I wrote...

I wouldn't have to say sci-fi/fantasy, which I have determined is the most embarrassing genre to write in if you're a ~~high schooler~~ (HEY WAIT I'M NOT A HIGH SCHOOLER ANYMORE! I GRADUATED! AAAHAHAHA YES!) summer-before-college girl who is trying to be somewhat normal/likable/friendly/etc. Back in high school, if I said I wrote sci-fi/fantasy, people would look at me weird.

Now, I figure, as long as I stay somewhat in the realm of "realistic fiction" (which Overactive Imagination, the story I started on Google Docs, is kind of not...but hey, it's a "transition" book, so shut up), it won't be quite as embarrassing to tell people that I write for fun.

And hey.

At least now I have something to work on if I'm ever stuck with a computer with Internet connection but nothing for The Eleventh. Yay?

Things I Have Learned (About Junior/Senior Year)

2009-06-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

I was going to make this a Facebook note and tag my friends who are going to be juniors and seniors next year, but I dunno if I will. So I guess I might as well post it here, since in case I want to put it on Facebook later, I'll just have to copy + paste it instead of try and write it again.

(By the way, I graduated yesterday. THAT MEANS I AM DONE WITH HIGH SCHOOL FOREVER. Yay.)

And here it is:

So I thought that I might as well help you guys out with your anxiety about junior/senior year by giving some helpful advice. =] little life lessons I learned at 2 am when I probably should have been asleep:

FOR JUNIORS:
- If your parents want to spend money to get you good scores: SAT tutors 1-on-1 seem to be more helpful than SAT classes.
- Retaking the SAT doesn't always raise your scores.
- This is the year you should start figuring out what subjects you hate so you DON'T take the hardest class possible in that area. It's not worth it. Go for the easy class. It's better.
- Staying up late doesn't help as much as you think it will. You'll end up forgetting more than you cram. Sleep instead.
- More sleep also means you will be happier. (See below.)
- Remember to have fun. Your social life/personal life will probably be a bigger deciding factor in the whole "good year/bad year" thing than however much schoolwork you have.
- Also: the more life experiences outside the classroom you have that are unique/life-changing/whatever to you, the easier time you're going to have writing that college essay, so get out of your house and do something cool.
- On that same note: it might be good to start thinking about college, or thinking about thinking about college. Don't stress about it, just think about what sort of things you want in a school.
- If you're in band: DON'T EVEN THINK about not going on that band trip. =]

FOR SENIORS:
- All those things about "having fun" in the above list apply to you to.
- The college essay isn't as bad as some people make it out to be. Just make sure you write about something that interests YOU, because then it will be more fun for the admissions people to read. Also, make sure other people edit it - namely, friends who aren't afraid to tell you what is wrong with your essay.
- Not kidding about this: spread out the work on your college apps. If you can, even try and do some stuff for the Common App during the summer. Start thinking about what you're going to write the essays about. You'll do SO much better if you don't leave it for the last moment.
- If a school you're looking at has Early Action (or rolling admission), DO IT. Even if you get in, you don't have to commit - and you get a feeling of relief that no matter what, you have a college to go to. And if you don't get in - no big loss. Plus it forces you to be on top of your college apps.
- Second semester senior year is a mindset, not necessarily a description of your classes. Keep that in mind.
- Also keep in mind that while, yes, you could get rescinded if you do really badly your second semester, you won't get rescinded if one A grade drops to a B. So don't stress about your grades, but don't slack. Just do enough so that you stay consistent with your first semester grades, but don't overkill it. Get some sleep. Have some fun.
- On that note: AP classes DO NOT stop after the AP. In some of my AP classes, I had more work during the last week of school than most other times during the whole year. So if you pick AP classes, be warned that you probably won't get much of a break.
- If you're in band: BAND TRIP. DO IT.

I kind of want it to be over now. (Rant time.)

2009-06-04T00:49:00.001-07:00

So I have two more days of high school classes, plus baccalaureate, graduation, graduation rehearsal, senior picnic, grad night and I'm sure something I'm forgetting.

And frankly, I don't want to do any of it. I kind of just want to skip forward a week and a half to that Friday after grad, where I can just stay home and sleep. Chill. Have some me time that isn't taken away from homework. (Which is, in fact, what I am doing right now - taking me time away from homework. Because, you know what? I DON'T CARE ANYMORE. Yes, that's right - I DON'T CARE about my high school classes. Even the one that has work due tomorrow. Don't caaaaaaaaaaaare.)

And plus, I don't even think the grade I get on the homework that is due tomorrow will affect my overall grade. It's just...bleh. I know my teacher would be either:

a) predisposed to give me an A, because she thinks I'm the next great American writer, or,
b) predisposed to give me a B or lower, because whatever I end up turning in will NOT be the short story version of the next great American novel

That, and I don't think our overall grades are calculated from grades on assignments.

That, and I really, really, really hate the story. Like, I just don't think it's worth my time anymore, because I can't do it justice within the page limit while still filling all the plot criteria, "giving it a strong sense of place", giving the characters a clear sense of character development, and keeping my style intact.

Basically, it's the most irritating project ever, I hate the story I've written, and I just want to skip to next Friday.

Oh - and I'm quitting BFS this year, because I'm definitely not making my goals. Yeah, I'll be going off to college in September, so that's one, and I'll probably get my driver's license and contact lenses (and I might learn to put on makeup), but I'm not going to do anything else. I just don't see it happening.

I also flat out failed that goal to go "above and beyond" on my Creative Writing final project. I just turned in a lame excerpt with a quick drawing so it could have a cover. I mean, I guess the drawing is cool, but whatever. I'm not proud of it, and I was SO proud of myself with my project for Humanities last year. It just really pisses me off that I wasn't able to do anything I would be proud of for that class. And now that girl, the one who was in Humanities with me last year and is in my Creative Writing class this semester, has ended up right.

AND THAT PISSES ME OFF MORE THAN ANYTHING.

I really, really, REALLY hate it when somebody tells me I won't be able to do something, and then I end up not doing it. She totally said to me, "you're not going to be able to top your Humanities project," and I really, really, really wanted to prove her wrong.

And now she's right.

UGH.

Also, I got a writing award. Now everyone's asking me to read stuff I've written. That's kind of a problem, since I'm not serious about writing - I'm just writing drafts I have no intention of publishing. I mean - come on! They're SCIENCE FICTION. They're supposed to be fun FOR ME, but now it seems like everyone is judging me based on what I write.

For fun.

For ME.

If I wanted to publish, I'd write something more popular, since I'd only publish if I thought it had a chance of being worth it. Honestly, I've gotten over that dream of being a famous writer (though it was fun to dream), and now I just want to be able to make a comfortable living off of a job with a salary. I guess the recent economic crisis put my dreams in perspective - my family has been so lucky, and we haven't been affected by it too much.

That's what I want when I grow up. I want to be able to ride out tough economic times with a job I might be able to depend on. MIGHT. Writing? Yeah, that doesn't even have a "might" in it - it's just not dependable, unless you're the 0.0001% of published writers who make it big. I know enough statistics to know my chances of that are so small, I might as well not dream about it (like - serious dream. Goofy dreams are still okay). So it kind of makes me feel uncomfortable that I got a writing award. I mean - what writing? Nothing I've written deserves an award. My stories and speeches don't win things anymore. My poems suck, and I actually hate it when people say they are good. I don't work on them AT ALL. You should recognize someone who works hard on their poems, not someone who throws them down on a paper in 5 minutes to hand in for a class.

I know it's "show biz" (but not), and it's not fair, but really. I should just stop entering poems into contests - other people deserve to win them. Not me. I know 3rd place (last year) and honorable mention (this year) aren't 1st place, but I know that sometimes just getting an honorable mention with something you've spent a lot of time on can be an awesome feeling. It sort of makes me sick to see that something I spent 5 minutes on before never caring about the poem again is robbing that feeling from someone else. Because losing a contest with something you've worked hard on? Pretty damn disappointing. No matter how slim your chances of winning are, there's still that pang of disappointment in yourself, and that's the worst kind of disappointment.

So I don't know why I got the writing award, and it's killing me because I feel so damn guilty and uncreative now. Like I have to measure up to this wonderful woman who died (but published three books in her life), and then her family made the award in her honor and attached a scholarship, and then gave it to me this year. I'm not majoring in creative writing - I'm (planning on) majoring in linguistics. I might switch to psychology, anthropology, sociology, environmental science...something vaguely SCIENCEY. Not writing. NOT EVEN ENGLISH.

ALKSJFLKAJSDLFKJALKDFJALKJDFLAKJDFLAKJDFLKSADJFLAKJSDFLAKJDSFLAKJSFLKAJSDFLKAJFLKJSDLKF

...I'm frustrated. It's also late at night, and I haven't done any homework. I should probably just go to sleep and call it quits, since I have the block period to fix the story and edit it, but...I dunno. We have to read a page of it out loud to the class on Friday. And my teacher, bless her heart, seems like she's spent the whole year telling the class how amazing I am. Now I think they're going to be just like her, expecting a page-long excerpt of the next great American novel - when really, I'm just Anne.

Sigh.

I mean, my novels aren't even EDITED. Why are people so excitable? Why does everyone say I should just go publish them? WHYYYYYY? I'm just eighteen! I'm just a teenager.

Siiiiiiiigh.

Oh - and my speech didn't get picked for graduation. It stung, of course, but what really stings is the continual, "oh, Anne, you're reading a speech at graduation, right?" Yeah, thanks, guys, for assuming I was able to write a contest-winning speech. It's becoming a bit tough to live up to your expectations.

So...

I think I'm going to take a break from creative writing. Maybe for the whole summer. I'm just going to write in my journal, maybe write here with random things (like...I dunno...but if I feel like it, I'll post, since that's what blogs are for), maybe try and organize my life so far. Whatever I write, it's gonna be for me. And no more goals - even setting lofty expectations for myself can be hard when I don't meet them. I'll just play it as it goes, take each day as what it is. I'm not going to write a story, I'm just going to recharge. Take a break. Maybe tell people I've quit, just so they calm down a bit and stop bugging me. A white lie won't hurt anyone, will it? =P

I'm not a superhero.

I'm just Anne.

I'm okay with that - why aren't you?

(On that note - "Waking Up In Vegas" by Katy Perry is a super fun song to dance to when nobody is looking. It's oddly inspirational. And sooooo incredibly catchy. ONE PERSON DANCE PARTY TIME. =D Shut up, and put your money where your mouth is, that's what you get for waking up in Vegas! Get up, and shake the glitter of your clothes now, that's what you get for waking up in Vegas!!!)

OhmygodI'msobehind

2009-04-21T17:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, well, according to the little graph thing on the Script Frenzy website, I should be at 70 pages if I want to be on-target to finish. I am currently at 57 pages, and I began the day with 53...and I've had 53 pages since about ten days ago (back when I used to be ahead).

See, you know how The Eleventh is made up of shorter sections (called "repeats"), and each book contains multiple repeats (three each for the first three books, and then two for the last one)? Well, back when I was still ahead with my page count, I was working on the first repeat in Incalzando/"Book" Two, which was Repeat 4. Repeat 4 was supposed to be the repeat in Incalzando with the most action (and the most characters, as only Sanura and Isamu don't show up), so I had it all perfectly outlined. The outline made it really easy to write, as I knew exactly where I was headed and I could just sit down and WRITE.

Then I finished it up, did a little party, and realized I only had half my page count. I began to write the opening scene for Repeat 5, but then didn't get very far...because I think I wrote a very, very, very vague outline up for it during class one day, but other than that, I don't really have a clear plan for it.

Now, I know this is pretty much how I wrote my first novel (whooo, Highness), but...I LIKE writing with outlines! It really helps, and I think the end products turn out better than if I write "by the seat of my pants". Plus, I feel like I'm more efficient, and I generally enjoy the writing process better if I have a "clear enough" basic outline with which to work from.

(Alright - between ending the previous paragraph I took a break to actually do some writing, and I am now nearing the end of the 58th page. I'm going to shoot for 60, and then go back to writing this blog post.)

Okay, now I have 60 pages...but I am still 10 pages behind! Arrgh, I wish I had an outline for this repeat. I guess I should at least go dig out my too-bare-bones outline that I wrote up in Creative Writing (while I should have been listening to my teacher read aloud a really depressing monologue written by another student in my class). Sigh...but I really want to win Screnzy - and then finish this scripted first draft of Incalzando by the time I graduate.

I guess if I can manage to get at least to page 65 by the end of today...? That might be a bit much, though, considering how much homework I need to get done before I go back to school tomorrow after being sick for two days. But if I can get to page 70 by the end of the school week, maybe 75 if I'm really diligent, then I guess I wouldn't be in a worse position than I am in right now. If I can get to page 90 by the time I leave to visit my future-home-for-the-next-four-years on Sunday, then I think I'd be enough on track to get to 100 pages by the end of Thursday.

So...I guess that's my game plan?

Oh hey...Screnzy...

2009-03-27T00:10:00.001-07:00

I am sorry to say that I haven't made any real progress on any of my goals, except for sort of bugging my mom about contact lenses and FINALLY driving on the highway. Twice. Two different highways. I still have to drive again, though...I can't let "freeway fear" take its hold!

Oh - but I did get into college. Five of them, in fact. (Although I've also gotten rejected to two and waitlisted to one, and I still need to hear back from four more.) Two of the ones I've already gotten accepted to I really like, so now I need to choose between them - unless my top choice accepts me, which they probably won't since my grades/scores/etc. aren't great, especially compared to the other people applying there from my high school. That, and the whole 8% acceptance rate thing...yeah, I'm not getting in.

But yeah. Other than that, no real progress on the goals.

That, and Script Frenzy starts on Wednesday (the day after Ivy Tuesday/The Day of Crushed Dreams), and I dunno what to do. Buuut I have an idea!

See, Fun-1 (the goal) just says to DRAFT the second book, right? Well, I haven't made much progress on it...I've basically just written a "prologue", of sorts. But what if I wrote it as a movie? I was thinking about adapting my Screnzy screenplay from last year into a novel, since I feel that I'm stronger as a novelist than a screenwriter, and it would be like...the perfect outline. Sort of.

And it just says draft, right? Nobody ever said the draft had to be a novel. ;] If I want it novelized, I can just "rewrite" it as a novel later, which would kill two birds with one stone - it would make it a real novel AND serve as a first bit of editing.

So if I draft Incalzando (probably as a lengthy movie, as I already know how to use Celtx for screenplays), that serves as a way to still participate in Screnzy without killing myself AND fulfill one of my goals AND, you know, actually make some progress with The Eleventh...

Plus, who knows? Maybe drafting things in script-format before putting them into novel-form will actually become a good (yet weird) way to tackle the writing process.

Either way, I'll have a jam-packed April even without Screnzy, what with Fiddler/pit orchestra going into "heavy rehearsal", dress rehearsal, and show; my other (stupid) writing projects, both for class and for useless fun; college decisions and my own "college decision" (AKA figuring out where I'll be going next year); and ramping up for AP tests/finals. I promised myself that I would do Screnzy again this year, though, and I intend on keeping that promise. Hey, if they allow novel-adaptations for Screnzy, I'm going to say that it's okay if I use this second foray into the world of screenwriting as a cheater-route to draft Incalzando. ;]

Sigh.

I hope this works out okay. :X

I WILL WIN SCRIPT FRENZY, THOUGH. I managed to write a quarter of what I needed in two days last year! I can win this. I just need to be disciplined, and maybe use a web-based program instead of/in addition to Celtx (which I have to re-download, anyway). Hey, I do have seventh period free periods...might as well see if I can't use them. ;]

(Wake me up when ~~September~~ April ends.)

Funny Google meme

2009-02-13T23:18:00.000-08:00

Yeah, so I don't really do the whole posting-notes-on-Facebook thing unless I really need to (I have never really needed to), so I figure...what the heck? It's not like anyone reads this little blog of mine. Who says I need to always post about a certain thing?

Oh, and since I don't use my real first name as my posting name, I'll just go with "Sara" like I always do..

So, here it is...the infamous Google meme:

Sara needs...
...to win sexiest veg! (...I'm a human?)

Sara looks like...
...a cross between Queen Victoria and the Vampire Lestat! (I never would have thought of that.)

Sara likes...
...to feel her boyfriend close. (I am single...)

Sara says...
...her prayers. (I am atheist.)

Sara wants...
...snow tires more than a gold watch. (But I live in a place it doesn't snow...)

Sara does...
...Barb's race! (What kind of race is this?)

Sara hates...
...LV, but it will have some BITE! (I hate Las Vegas?)

Sara can't...
...afford child support. (Uh oh...that's not good.)

Sara goes...
...USA! (But I'm here already!)

Sara is...
...a man. (No. I am female.)

Sara loves...
...Anders loves Maria. (I don't get it - am I in a love triangle with an Anders and a Maria?)

Sara should...
...'ve done more than dump him. (But I thought I liked to be close to my boyfriend? Google, make up your mind!)

So yeah.

Mindless fun. =D

Apparently, I'm a very sexy vegetable.

A little change of scenery.

2009-02-13T22:28:00.000-08:00

I realized I've had the same template since I began this blog: the "Snapshot" one (not the "Snapshot Sable" or "Snapshot Tequila" theme - the honest-to-goodness "Snapshot").

I think it's long past time for a change, don't you?

So I'm going to pick a new template right now! And it's not going to be a cop-out change to "Snapshot Sable" or "Snapshot Tequila", though I was tempted to. It's going to be...hmmm...

How about I edit this when I pick one? ;)

Edit: I picked "Scribe" as the new template. It is weird having the sidebar on the left, not the right...but I guess I'll just get used to it! :)

Re: The Last Airbender (yes, again)

2009-02-08T23:40:00.001-08:00

Alright, so apparently Paramount has recast the role of Zuko. Instead of Jesse McCartney, we have Dev Patel, the young man who played the lead role in the recent hit, Slumdog Millionaire. (A movie I have not seen but sort of want to, since everyone I know except one person loved it.)

So...um...good things about that: Patel over McCartney ANY day. Apparently he knows tae kwon do. This is a good thing.

Bad things about that: Zuko is pretty clearly from a Chinese-based culture, not an Indian-based culture, so we still have bad casting. It could very well end up being a token PoC role. Having a group of white kids save the world from a bunch of dark-skinned evil people is never a nice thing to watch in the movies. And, of course, the scary thought that M Night Shyamalan might end up casting himself as Iroh, which would be...there are no words.

So yeah, still not great. I think I might join the letter-writing campaign once I have two brain cells to rub together again. I want to be able to write an eloquent letter, not brainless blog babble.

I just hope that if they make the Fire Nation all Asian Indian, they alter the culture so that it is more Indian and less Chinese so it would look less blatant. I also hope that if they're doing "visual contrast" (sigh, my late night idea from last week looks so distasteful now), they at least make the Earth Kingdom Chinese. I mean, if they're not going to make the Water Tribe INUIT (or at least DARK SKINNED like they're supposed to be - and I'm not going to even bother mentioning the Air Nomads), they should at least make one group of Avatar people get the right bunch of actors. Here's to hoping some little Chinese-American girl can snag the part of Toph in the next movie so at least ONE of the not-formerly-evil heroes can look the way they're supposed to.

And I'd just like to say...Dev Patel would be a pretty good Sokka. He's got the ears.

BFS Update: February 8

2009-02-08T23:28:00.000-08:00

Alright, so I did like NOTHING for these this month, but it's February and I'd rather not do my homework now, so once again, I bring you the BFS updates! Here we go:

BIG:

Get into a regular exercise schedule - yeah, need to do this.
Better eating habits - I cut out chocolate from my diet but went back on January 26 and stayed back...and I still have horrible eating habits! So this isn't good, either.
Get into college! --> Graduate from high school! --> Go to college! - yeah, so I'm doing well with this one, of course! ;) I actually have the "get into college" one pretty much finished. I haven't gotten in anywhere yet, but I've done everything else - every single form is in. So now I'm just waiting. That's good.

FUN:

Draft the second book in The Eleventh before high school graduation - I started this! I outlined the fourth repeat during the past week and have about 1000 words written. My goal is to have maybe 15-20k by the end of the month...February is kind of a busy month for me. =X
Watch a sunrise from a high vantage point - need to do this.
Do something "above and beyond" for my creative writing class final project - still thinking. I have an idea, but it's only that - an idea. I'm in the class, though, so I'll try to absorb ideas and such while I'm in it.

SCARY:

Learn how to put on makeup - need to do this.
Get driver's license - I have been practicing driving! I have like...5 hours...which isn't good (since I wanted to have, like, ten by now), but a five day weekend is coming up. My goal for the five-day weekend: drive everyday for at least half an hour, and drive for an hour on at least two of the days. Ideally, I'd want to get 5 hours in during the weekend, but we'll see.
Get contact lenses - my mom said she'd call and get information, but I'm not red-ing this until she calls, even though I guess TECHNICALLY I've made progress.

Total:
- Not started: 6 (2 big, 2 fun, 2 scary)
- In progress: 3 (1 big, 1 fun, 1 scary)
- Completed: 0
- Failed: 0
Overall goal:
- 6 goals total (progress: 0/6)
- At least one in each category (categories filled: none)

Avatar rant: another note...visual contrast?

2009-01-30T23:39:00.001-08:00

I thought about something as I was flipping through some websites about the matter and not going to sleep like I should.

Apparently Shyamalan (the director) wants to show the four countries as being different ethnicities, more so than animated show does.

I am totally fine with this - I actually like the idea of visual contrast, since it builds upon the "eye color" thing the animated series had. And since it IS an adaptation, it makes sense for changes like these, as long as their done well.

If I was the director and I wanted to do this, which I might if I were the director, and for some reason I could only do a casting call for Aang's role in Texas...yeah, Noah Ringer might be great. He's (allegedly) really good at karate, and he could probably be trained to be really good at bagua/"airbending". And hey! The last airbender, right? Wouldn't it look really cool to have one Caucasian boy look visually isolated amidst a sea of people of other appearances in order to symbolize Aang's cultural isolation? You know, since his whole people just got genocide-d by the Fire Nation, and all.

Personally, as long as Noah Ringer was good (and I didn't see...Perris? was that his name? first), I would probably go with my above idea. Make the Air Nomads Caucasian. There are plenty of cool Caucasian actors out there you could grab for flashback appearances of the Air Nomad monks. It could work.

After that, I would probably cast people who either were or looked somewhat like they were Inuit. Yes, I understand that compared to other ethnicities, Inuit actors aren't overwhelming Hollywood like the Caucasians are, but there are probably some who would be interested. I'm sure that people with more similar likenesses to Katara than Nicola Peltz. Perhaps those of Southeast-Asian or South-Asian descent?

Considering the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom look fairly similar on the animated show, if Shyamalan wanted to increase the visual divide between the two, he could make one predominantly East-Asian (there are a lot of Japanese-American, Chinese-American, and Korean-American actors out there, you know) and the other...not. Maybe the Earth Kingdom could be more Chinese, and the Fire Nation could be more Phillipino. Or if Shyamalan wanted to go further, he could adapt one of them to be more Indian, as the idea of the avatar originates from India.

It is fantasy. I'm sure the fans of Avatar wouldn't mind it so much as completely whitewashing all the major roles.

Just a thought.

Speaking of animation...

2009-01-30T22:28:00.001-08:00

Okay, so I know nobody reads this, but I need to rant a little bit about the controversy over The Last Airbender's recent casting choices for the lead roles of Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Zuko.

And yes, I am on the side of the people who made Saving the World with Postage (AKA "Aang Ain't White"). For record's sake...Aang ain't white! (And neither is Katara...Sokka...or Zuko.)

Now, there are a lot of arguments going around on many different points, and I'm going to voice my opinion on a very, very, very small portion of them. I might rant again on another post later, since I may or may not be possibly interested in a future job in something that may or may not ever relate to something like this. (How's that for circle-speak?)

I shall be focusing on the issue of both racism and double-racism in the casting decisions and responses to them...and I'm going to first say that I am a super-extremely-pale Northern European-descent (and a bit o' Northern Italian, which ain't a tanned, dark-skinned area, by the way, but that's where I get my last name) female teenager. So yes, I am white. I also live in an area where a large percentage of my classmates are of Asian descent, with the majority being Chinese-Americans. My best friend growing up was Chinese-American, and her parents were immigrants. I spent a looot of time at her house and with her family eating real Chinese food, hearing Mandarin spoken left and right, going to Chinese culture festivals, hearing live Chinese music on traditional instruments (she played the...I want to say guzheng, but I'm not sure if that's right), sitting with her and staring in awe at her extra Chinese school homework (and Chinese writing on it) next to my just-for-fun reading books, and all that.

This is why I want to learn Mandarin more than anything, and I'd be fine going to China for study abroad even though Japan is probably my first choice (since I actually know some Japanese...but I think China is my second choice right now). If it weren't for the fact that my school didn't have a Mandarin program when I was choosing a foreign language to study (and assuming it would have worked with my schedule every year), I would be in my sixth year of studying it. Unfortunately, that's not how it worked out...instead, I studied Japanese, the only Asian language offered.

Anyway, enough about me:

Point that I shall respond to #1: why are you complaining about having white actors for the parts? That's racist! They should be judged on their acting ability, not their looks.

My response: wow, stop being naiive.

Actors are judged for their appearance all the time - not always their acting ability! This is especially true with child actors (who would be/should be playing the major roles of The Last Airbender, since the characters are children/teenagers). When the cast list for the first Harry Potter movie came out, nobody said anything about Daniel Radcliffe being a good actor. They said things like: "he looks exactly like Harry". Now, for The Last Airbender, I could give them credit if Noah Ringer actually was the best suited for the job for his martial arts, as apparently, he's a really good karate fighter. But that's a big "if" - what about this kid who not only looks quite a bit like Aang (and could be easily coached to act like him), but is also very good at martial arts? He even matches a lot of Aang's style with staff fighting (of course, this is to the eyes of an ignorant white girl.) He's even pretty much the right age! Other than the fact that his skin could be viewed as a bit too dark for Aang (which doesn't detract much from his visual match to the character) and that he doesn't have gray eyes (colored contacts?) he might as well BE AANG. And what about other boys who probably could have compared well, too?

Also - Jesse McCartney for Zuko. McCartney is not a very good actor, and...martial arts? Zuko has a TON of fighting scenes in Avatar, so what are they going to do for The Last Airbender? He was clearly just put in here for the pre-teen girls...

Similarly to Jackson Rathbone, who was quoted as saying that he could just tan himself and shave the sides of his head to look like Sokka. Okay, Sokka doesn't have as many martial arts roles, and I've heard good things about Rathbone's acting (he wasn't bad in Twilight)...BUT SERIOUSLY. Weren't there ANY good dark-skinned people who could do the same thing?

No idea about the girl who plays Katara, but she doesn't look like she could do convincing tai chi/"waterbending" and not look ridiculous. And again? Dark-skin? There wasn't another girl out there, maybe of South Asian descent if they couldn't find an Inuit girl who wanted to go into acting (as there are a lot more Indian-Americans than Native Alaskans just because India has such a large population and Alaska doesn't), who could act just as well as this girl? Seriously?

My main response: only tell me they were the best actors if you actually viewed the casting process and came to that conclusion on your own. You've only seen the final outcomes. Don't talk to me about the ones who were turned down being "not good actors" if you don't know who they even are.

Point that I shall respond to #2: but the voice actors are Caucasian! Why do you care if the people who portray them in the live action movie are also Caucasian? Acting ability is all that matters!

My response: there is a big difference between our sense of sight and sound.

Most animals rely mostly on one sense; not all senses are created equal. In the majority of humans, that dominant sense is that of sight. Only in people who have extremely impaired vision or blindness does another sense start to dominate the playing field (and yes, that sense usually is hearing).

When you watch Avatar: The Last Airbender, it matters less that "the voices sound Caucasian" because the appearances of the characters clearly are not. They a sort of fantasy amalgamation of various Asian cultures (not just East Asian) and Inuit cultures - there are probably more cultures influencing the world of Avatar, but the obvious ones are, well, Asian. If you see someone who is Asian and hear someone who is white, chances are you'll probably perceive the person as Asian more than white. Besides, I'd like to make the argument that an American accent from an Asian-American sounds an awful like an American accent from a European-American, and this is an American show. They're going to have, for the most part, American accents.

With live action, the actor needs to be able to match the physical appearance, too, because that's usually how people remember them. When you meet people, how do you remember them? Do you remember their voice or their appearance? Again, sight over sound. Live action actors can't rely on animators to make their appearance for them; they have to provide it themselves. That is why actors need to be able to match appearances, too, not just act.

Also: in the case of a brand-new screenplay being made into a movie, casting can be more lenient because there is no appearance to match. Unless someone's appearance is crucial to the script itself, such as if someone mentions them as having blonde hair in a line, the casting should be based on acting ability. However, in the case of Avatar being made into a movie, the characters already have preexisting appearances that people know about. This is the same thing for movies based off of people's lives - if somebody was going to make a movie about the life of, say, President Obama, you probably wouldn't want, say, Tom Hanks to play Obama in the movie. And why? "He doesn't look like Obama." That would be why.

Aang, Katara, Sokka, Zuko, and everyone else in the animated series already have appearances. People are going to say things like, "he doesn't look like Aang", if Noah Ringer doesn't match Aang's appearance. Guess what? They are. (I refer you back to the Saving the World with Postage blog.)

My main response: sight over sound. If a character has a preexisting appearance, then the actor's appearance needs to match. That's show biz, kid.

Point that I shall respond to #3: the character's look white - look at Aang's eyes! They are round and gray. That is definitely not Asian...they look white to me.

My response: you do know the eye color thing is a symbolic reference to the bending skills of the character, right?

And not all Asians have straight black hair, "olive" skin, and "squinting" dark brown eyes. Yes, quite a few Asians do, but not all. Not even all East Asians have those traits, and those are probably the Asians you're thinking of when you say that.

Round eyes are a stylistic trait generally put in with animation to show psychological immaturity and young age. Aang is a twelve-year-old boy during the show, so his eyes show his age and wonderment at his surroundings. His eyes are gray because the gray color represents the Air Nomads. Similarly, the Earth Nation has green eyes, the Water Tribe has blue eyes, and the Fire Nation has orange eyes. Wait - orange eyes? No humans have those, right? Obviously, Jesse McCartney can't be Zuko. He doesn't have the right eye color!

Also, the characters do look Asian (or Inuit, etc.). Cartoon characters don't look like real people with just their physical features; their clothes and surroundings show what sort of people they should be. Toph is introduced wearing Chinese-styled clothing. Toph might as well be Chinese. Similarly, Aang's surroundings at the Air Nomad temples, his style of dress, and his idealogy is very Tibetan/Nepalese. If Aang were from a real-life area, it would probably be from the Tibet/Nepal area of the Himalayas.

Not Texas.

My main response: the eye color is irrelevant, the eyes are stylistic and shown for children, and other physical cues show what "culture" the character is when the character is an unrealistic-looking cartoon.

Anyway, those are some points I wanted to address. This is nowhere near all I wanted to say, because I feel strongly about this, and I'm not exactly sure how to argue well. Or even how to end this post. But I want to refer people to this photo/screenshot essay from the Saving the World with Postage blog as a final comment, I guess, because it really lets the animated show speak for itself.

Avatar is a stunningly gorgeous piece of American animation. For its demographic, it has a well-crafted plot with compelling characters and a very imaginative alternate reality. It manages to appeal to minorities in the United States while appealing to the majority, it shows a vast array of people of different ethnicities from the world of Avatar, and managed to - get this - make a lot of money. Yes, white America (my family included), an American-made animated show with very blatant Asian influences managed to make a lot of money in America. And it did this while still maintaining a high level of quality!

I'd also like to point out that most, if not all, of the writing in the show is actual Chinese. That's pretty blatant. And awesome. Because written Chinese? It's really cool. You know, in my opinion, and all.

And I care about this because I was excited to see a well-imagined, well-written, well-animated, and well-acted piece of American animation that, you know, had a plot. And did well. And had Asian influences, especially those relating to Hayao Miyazaki, who is, you know, really amazing. I really like Avatar, and I don't have many complaints about it. I was excited for the movie. I'm not really excited anymore, because the all-white casting sort of ruins some of the main themes of the show, though I want to see how the movie pans out. I'm hesitant to hand over my money to watch it, though.

I hate poetry. (And other things!)

2009-01-28T23:17:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I'm writing something for my blog because I don't want to annotate another poem. I think AP English Literature has taught me that no, I don't really like poetry all that much. I mean, actually, I think it can be cool...but noooo, I don't like annotating six poems a night and then beating them to death the next day during class discussions and tests and whatnot.

Can we go back to novels now? Or can we please do a compromise and read a nice play? I didn't mind Hamlet quite as much (aside from all the nit-picky tests we had on it that I all failed). But the poetry? ANOTHER intensive poetry unit, with a third and maybe a fourth coming if that's much long it takes you to get us "AP ready"?

So yes, I hate poetry. I sort of dread when we do the poetry unit in Writer's Craft (AKA creative writing class).

Oh, and yes! I am FINALLY taking a creative writing class! Okay, so basically, nothing we've done yet is really all that new ("first thought" word vomit free-writing, which is the basic principle of NaNo, and microfictions, which we did in 10th grade a bit and I do all the time in Calliope club), but it's so much fun. I think I'll benefit a lot from it when we work on longer (short) pieces, because I think that's where I could use the most work. I think my microfictions and late-night-I-don't-know-any-better poems are better than my more substantial short stories. And novels, of course, but that goes without saying.

I'm still thinking of ways I can do a "Humanities final surpassing final project" for that class, but since he hasn't actually officially told us the specs for the project, it's feels somewhat pointless. I sat next to one of my friends on the bus during a band event who was in Humanities with me (and is now in my Writer's Craft class), and she said it couldn't be done.

Well, my oboe-playing friend, it CAN be done, and it WILL be done! I SWEAR IT!

(It's a BFS goal, and it's one of the ones I know I'm going to obsess over because it's not that painless but very time-consuming. But that's okay, because I will wow the class with my better-than-Fairy-Tale project, I know it.)

I'm thinking something that's sort of like a scrapbook, and where the ten pages of writing are crumpled up and you have to find them to piece together the story. I was thinking about calling it "Demon Book", and the demon book is a character/object in the story...and it eats people! And the project itself is going to be like a replica of the demon book from the story itself. It makes more sense in my head, and if it's physically more than ten pages, then I don't know if he'll let me do it.

Or I might do a short sequential-art-type thing in color, and that will be more amazing than Fairy Tale because...of...the pictures. I don't know, though, since Fairy Tale was a full-on 12k-word novella (I'M CALLING IT A NOVELLA, IT'S NOT A SHORT STORY. SHUT UP.) that took up 40 pages because it had 30 illustrations (plus a cover doodle and little pen doodle of a butterfly on the one two-page spread that didn't have an illustratin). And 26 of those illustrations were in color! So yeah.

...I just flipped through it, and I'm like, "wow, knowing me and my teacher's limits on the project, this is going to be hard to surpass," since I can't exactly go for volume. And volume was what made Fairy Tale...well...Fairy Tale. 100% A-grade work.

Heh.

We'll see.

Oh, and I think Wall-E should have gotten the nomination for Best Picture, not just Best Animation. But whatever, the Academy is made up of snobs who don't generally like animation...or "kids movies". I just hope it wins Best Animation (it totally deserves it) and Best Original Song ("Down to Earth"!). And if it got nominated for Best Score, I think it should win that, too, if not just for "Define Dancing".

BFS 2009: Elucidation

2009-01-03T19:23:00.001-08:00

Alright, so just so I know where I'm going with these...just a little more on my goals for this year, since it's a little early for a real update on them. :P (Only January 3!)

BIG:

Get into a regular exercise schedule: so I want to work out a lot, basically, so I don't get into the habit of being flabby, pudgy, and gross! I don't want to worry too much about the "weight loss mentality", since I'm not overweight, I just want muscle tone and stamina. So for this, I'm going to really try to make the effort to go to the gym at least twice or three times a week during the school year, and whenever my dad goes (six - seven days a week) during the summer. Also, no matter what, I want to get into the habit of doing crunches and pushups daily. I will start with ten crunches and ten pushups everyday during January, and then increase each month by five until I am doing fifty of each everyday! (At least, heh.) I figure I should at least do these, and work out at the gym...and then once I get better at running, I will run outside! I want to run outside, it seems really nice. Especially considered to a boring old treadmill in a YMCA basement. :)
Better eating habits: just like the above goal, this has two parts to it for now. One of them is a repeat of what I did a few years with soda - I just stopped drinking it, even though I pretty much got a soda every time my family went out to dinner (sometimes once every week!). I'm going to do this with chocolate, because chocolate is a slippery slope "gateway" for me. Once I start eating chocolate, I can't stop. I will binge on chocolate, or move on to other snacks when I shouldn't be eating or should be eating something healthier. So for BFS, I will start by stopping...eating so much chocolate. I will allow myself to eat chocolate only one day a month. The other thing is snacking - sometimes I snack so much when I am home! I really should only eat during mealtimes. The only exception is I don't eat much for breakfast or lunch at school, so I usually eat when I get home. I will ONLY eat a small yogurt or a piece of fruit, though, and nothing until dinner after that. Hey...it's a start.
Get into college! --> Graduate from high school! --> Go to college!: This one is pretty self-explanatory, don't you think? ;) I've already sent off my applications to all my schools (all twelve of them), with the exception of the payment to Eugene Lang College (of New School University), since they don't let you pay online (annoying...). So other than just sending off the midyear transcript report thing, I'm pretty much done on my end...it's just a waiting game until March/April. Then it's just a matter of waiting until graduation...then waiting until college itself! I can't wait! I'm so excited! :)

FUN:

Draft the second book in The Eleventh before high school graduation: I drafted the first book for NaNo this year, and I want to make progress on the series in a timely manner. Since I'll be a "second semester senior" starting in two weeks, I figure I might as well channel my senioritis into someting fun - the second book! I'll probably break it up into smaller-than-NaNo chunks, so I don't overwhelm myself...but who knows? I'll be starting this up in the second half of January, when finals are over.
Watch a sunrise from a high vantage point: I've ALWAYS wanted to watch a sunrise from a good vantage point. I live on the west coast and I'm kind of a night owl, so I have two reasons to see plenty of nice sunsets...but there's something special about sunrises. So I want to see one. REALLY see one. I want to watch the sun come up!
Do something "above and beyond" for my creative writing class final project: Last year during second semester, I had Humanities for my English elective class, and there was a creative final project assigned halfway through the course. Some people did the whole project the weekend before it was due (or the night before - it was due on a Wednesday for my class). I, on the other hand, started it about five weeks before (since I had Screnzy for the first four weeks) before the due date, and sort of outdid my entire class...I wrote a 12k-word novella incorporating the concepts we were assigned, but I didn't stop there. I then illustrated it! With color...pencils! 30 rather large illustrations (24 color + 6 graphite with color border for the concepts) plus a cover doodle. It was called Fairy Tale, and it earned me (I think) the only 100% grade in the class. So now I'm taking my school's intro to creative writing class, and I know there's some sort of final project involved...and I kind of want to outdo Fairy Tale. I don't know how (or if I'll be able to), but I want to do something "above and beyond" for this class, too, since Fairy Tale was basically the pride and joy of my junior year. I want something like that for senior year, too. :)

SCARY:

Learn how to put on makeup: This is me being ashamed that I've never worn makeup...except for nail polish, and that's only a few times. I only have two colors! Anyway, I don't really know how to put on makeup, and I figure I really should know how (I'm almost 18 - I should be able to put on makeup). So one of these days I'll ask someone to help me out with the whole makeup thing...and I'll try to make myself wear it, too. You know. Actually put some effort into my appearance...sometimes...a little. I'm really bad at this...so it's a little scary, since I'm afraid I'll embarrass myself.
Get driver's license: Another shameful thing. I should have done this over a year ago...I just got my permit in September (almost two years too late), and I've only had one lesson (out of four) and don't practice much. I REALLY SHOULD (borderline need) to get my license before I go to college...so that means practicing! I'm rather scared of driving, but I need to bite back my fears and do it. The more I drive, the better I'll get, and the less scared I'll be...so I'm going to try and practice at least three hours a week (like start out with half an hour six days a week, or something...)
Get contact lenses: This is because I started wearing glasses full-time at the beginning of this school year, and most people wear contacts...I'd like to be able to look like I used to, without the glasses, if I choose to (without becoming "blind", heh). It's kind of a scary concept to poke my eyes (and I hate going to the optometrist for some reason - I always feel self-conscious or embarrassed and I don't know why), but I really should get contacts. It's fairly easy, since I've already told my mom I want contacts, and I think it's covered in our insurance. So I think we just need to call up the optometrist and order them...or something like that. The nice thing is that I think my mom will do much of the work of GETTING the contacts...I just need to, you know, figure out how to start wearing them. And then wear them. Except not on Mondays, since I have to get up extra early and can barely brush my teeth, let alone put in contacts!

So yeah...those are my expanded goals for 2009. Who knows? Maybe I'll get all of them this year, instead of 6/10! (Or, in this case...6/9, since that is my basic...or 7/9, which is like basic + one?)

Wish me luck? :)

2009: The Year of Big, Fun, Scary Adventures

2009-01-01T23:16:00.001-08:00

Alright! So I have nine goals this year, three for each...word...?

And here they are, in their most basic form! (After about three minutes of "careful" deliberation.)

BIG:

Get into a regular exercise schedule
Better eating habits
Get into college! --> Graduate from high school! --> Go to college!

FUN:

Draft the second book in The Eleventh before high school graduation
Watch a sunrise from a high vantage point
Do something "above and beyond" for my creative writing class final project

SCARY:

Learn how to put on makeup
Get driver's license
Get contact lenses

I tried to go easy on the "fun" ones this time around...

Oh, and my overall goal is this:

In order to be a BFS Winner for 2009, I have to complete six goals, with at least one in each category. So it'll be a little harder than last year...but then again, some of them are fairly doable. Big-3, I'm looking at you. ;) Hopefully Fun-3 should work out for me, same for Scary-3. So I guess the 3's should be my basic ones in each category...funny how that worked out.

So yup.

Here's to a BIG, FUN, and SCARY 2009 full of many adventures! :)

Brainstorm for 2009...

2009-01-01T16:44:00.000-08:00

Okay, so it is January 1, and I want to make some big, fun, and scary adventures for this year. I know it's going to be a year of BIG, FUN, and SCARY changes no matter what I do (and I can't wait), but I want to add in some of my own.

So I figure that I'd just use this for brainstorming/coming up with a list, since that is sort of what this blog has turned into...I think I blogged more about BFS during 2008 than about what I was writing (which was what I made this blog for originally)!

Anyway, so I'm going to take a few minutes and just brainstorm some things I've wanted to do, and then use that list to pick from for my "official" BFS goals for 2009. Alright...so here I go:

Get into a regular exercise schedule
Even if I don't go to the gym, at least do some crunches and pushups (or something) at home
Be able to run a mile in under 9:00 (I've only done this once before in my whole life, and that was in seventh grade! And I don't run anymore...)
Eliminate chocolate/"junk food" (but mainly chocolate) from my diet except for on my birthday, my mom's birthday, my dad's birthday, or my graduation day (hey, I did it with soda at the beginning of high school)
Stop snacking when I am at home! Only eat three meals, and maybe a small afterschool snack (like a yogurt since they give me calcium/those bacteria that help your stomach)
Draft the second book in The Eleventh before my graduation from high school!
Learn how to put on makeup! It's so shameful - I'm almost 18, and I can only manage to put on nail polish. Speaking of which, I need to obtain some black nail polish. I can never find it, and I want some for band concerts!
Get my driver's license and practice driving A LOT. I barely ever find time to practice, and I NEED to get my license before I leave for college. This is another shameful thing...I should probably practice everyday, but I need my parents, and that's a bit tough...so maybe at least 4 hours per week? I'm not sure about this, but I want to get my license in the summer at the very latest!
Get into college and buy myself a sweatshirt as a present :)
Graduate from high school! And then go to college in the fall! :)
Learn how to be more composed - I laugh a lot, and I'm going to turn 18 this spring...I need to learn how to be more like an adult. And I'm going to start by learning how to stay composed even if I want to laugh uncontrollably.
Sign up for a FUN class once I get to college. Something new and exciting!
Take/assemble pictures of "my home", whatever I consider to be part of "my home", and put them into some sort of album (at least on my computer - I don't need to actually print it out, I just want it to be a "complete" album) to help me remember the good times when I go off to college
Watch a sunrise from a high-up vantage point :) (no clue when/where I can do this, but I've always wanted to)
Do something "above and beyond" for my Creative Writing final project, just like I did for my Humanities. In fact, I want to do something that "defeats" my Humanities final...even though there are more limitations on the Creative Writing one (so it will be harder)
Spend a day with one of my best friends (who lives in Canada)! We've done this every single year since we met, and I don't want 2009 to be any different
Go up to the city with my friends, either by car or by train. I've never done this...
I want to take purikura pictures with my friends again! I've only done this once in America, and I have so much room in my sticker book for it...I want to fill it up with pictures of me and my friends so I can bring it with me to college (since it's tiny, so it won't be a big deal)
Start writing in my 15th journal by the end of the year? Maybe? I'm nearing the end of my 9th, and I ended my 4th at the beginning of 2008...
Move out of my house :)
Buy a sweatshirt/other gear from my NEW SCHOOL! (Which may or may not actually be...you know...THE New School...University...EUGENE LANG! Ahahah wonderful name.)
Get contacts...
I suppose I should try to relearn Japanese? Since I couldn't take it this year...but I will DEFINITELY take a language this fall, even if it isn't more Japanese (I reallyreallyreally want to learn Mandarin)
Even though I don't really draw much, I will draw every main character in The Eleventh...separately (no cheating with Clanae + Arach in the same picture, for example)
Do some sort of...thing? To make my second semester fun. Like...I dunno! But something second-semester-y :)
Write something not-short-story-like that could take place entirely in the real world AND present day (like for Screnzy or NaNo or something)

...Yeah...this took me, like, all day, since I couldn't stay at the computer for long.

I'll do another post with an actual list.

...Later... :P

BFS 2008: THE RESULTS!

2009-01-01T02:32:00.000-08:00

1. Two novel drafts - 2/2 - I did this one. And I didn't cheat. ;)
2. Script Frenzy '08 - Previously done.
3. Regular exercising (twice a week) - 15/100 workouts - This is that "epic fail" those thirteen-year-olds kept talking about.
4. Regular journaling (seven pages per week) - Oh, I did this one, and I did it SO WELL it makes me sort of not hate 2008 as much as I did.
5. Regular creative writing (one piece per week) - 43/50 pieces, 6/12 accompanying images - Once I realized I had five goals done, I sort of lost interest in this...meh. I only came up...a little...short. Oops. :P
6. One contest + one submission - Previously done.
7. More socializing - 39/40 events - EVERYONE IN THE PLANET canceled on me last minute, so my would-be 40th events all...never happened. Bleh. So close, too. I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE GONE TO THAT CONCERT BACK IN DECEMBER.
8. "Progress" - Sshh, I already got this one...
9. More studying/earlier start on homework/"good grades" - I like to think that since January, I made significant progress. Or, at least, I got more sleep...either way, I think I did...a little...better. What the heck, I'll give myself this one. :P
10. Summer job - Previously failed.

Total:
- Not started: 0
- In Progress: 0
- Completed: 6
- Failed: 4
Overall goal: 5/10 goals by the end of 2008

This means I finished my overall goal - I got my five goals (plus a bonus sixth goal)! Hooray! I am very proud of myself for all of my finished goals: my novels, my journals, my script, my submissions, my grades (ish), and my progress on that personal problem. (So many p's.)

So yeah.

I didn't like 2008, but at least this thing went okay. I will post some big, fun, and scary adventures for myself to do in 2009 later today, when it isn't two in the morning and I have the brainpower to come up with something official. Because, you know, 2009 will be big, fun, and scary for me no matter what...

Since in 2009, I will graduate from high school and go to college (among other things). I have been looking forward to this for SO LONG, so I know it will be fun. Of course college is big! And, you know, it will be a little scary. Okay, maybe more than just a little - I have a bunch of things I'm worried about.

But I know it will be fun, too. And AMAZING, and something I've waited for. And hopefully, it will be something I feel like I have earned, a situation that might not work out "the best way" but one that I will MAKE into the best result possible.

Because even if I don't get into my first choice (Brown University - pretty sure I'm not getting in), or even the two that keep going head-to-head for "second choice" (Northwestern or NYU - they're like the same school, but in rather different locations!), I'll still be IN COLLEGE, bottom line. And that's what I really want...I just really want to go to college.

So yeah.

2009 = a big, fun, and scary year, no matter what list I make up in a few hours. :D

And you know what?

I couldn't be happier about it.

BFS Update: December 26

2008-12-26T21:25:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-26T21:11:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-18T22:26:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-12-10T21:45:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-08T00:48:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-30T19:55:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-29T23:05:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-21T21:02:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-21T16:50:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-14T17:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-12T23:37:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-21T22:23:00.001-07:00

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

2008-08-12T22:12:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-11T16:29:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-10T23:15:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-07-15T23:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-04T22:48:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-25T23:32:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-04-23T21:53:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-20T23:08:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-04-01T22:44:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-03-31T22:51:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-16T21:17:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-03-09T23:14:00.000-07:00

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

2008-02-02T23:52:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-02-01T20:59:00.000-08:00

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.)

Have you ever...?

2008-01-28T17:40:00.000-08:00

Have you ever been listening to some music, and then felt completely inspired by a feeling? Maybe not even music, but if you've been reading something, watching something, experiencing something, and then you get a feeling, and somehow that feeling is something that inspires you so much you can't really express it? Or repress it, as it turns out.

I was listening to some music, and now I have over a thousand words for a new novel ("edit": I actually took a break while writing this post, and am now done with the first chapter, and have 1875 words...heheh). I've decided to make this one sort of episodic, and I won't write it with any sort of outline. At all. Ever. If it's going to have a plot, the plot will happen on its own, and I'll have to keep it all in my head. If I finish the draft of it, which might be nice but not at all required, I'll probably go into a more detailed editing phase, and go with an outline in order to fill in plot holes.

But for now, I'm just going to be writing on instinct, or, as the Great and Honorable Chris Baty (my hero) says, writing by the seat of my pants. And it's going to be a pants-kicking novel, lemme tell you that, Chris. :D

(Speaking of which, I really need to bug my friend to give me back my copy of No Plot, No Problem. Every month or so, I feel like I REALLY need to read it, if not only because I associate Chris Baty's awesome voice (both in writing and literal voice) with NaNoWriMo, and I think I'm going into withdrawal. So I need to read it, since it's like all his pep talks/news blotter blots/podcasts rolled into one pants-kicking book. Dammit, I want that book back right now!)

So, basically, it's called Travels Through Dreamland (AKA Dreamland). It's about a young man named Robert and a young woman named Tawny (who is actually a goldfish, but still with the same name) exploring dreams. Each chapter is them going to a new dream. Robert takes notes.

And that's about all I have. I suppose it could either be seen as a series of shorts or, if I feel like it, have an arcing plot that goes through all the dreams...or something...nehhh.

I just wanna write some sort of good-feelings-y book. I think. That's the feeling I'm working off, anyway. :) But we'll see. My goal is to not have anybody die this time around. We don't want another Jamie, now do we? :P

Anyway, I hope to continue with this novel. Then I'll really start working on Urban Myth and Eternal Flame (or Triptych or Hitchhiker Cat or whatever I'll be doing for Script Frenzy) once I have some time to actually concentrate. Or not. We'll see. I just really want a break from the Highness/Urban/Eternal world. It's sort of exhausting dealing with those characters, even if I love them to pieces. They like to hang out in my mind. Me, Matt, and Sissy are tight. Which is good, seeing as I've made a promise to myself to get Urban Myth published.

So I'll write that one. I will. I actually, truly, really will. I might just want to write Dreamland first. It's more relaxing than Urban Myth will be, anyway.

I think.

Probably.

(Oh yeah - and I've added two more goals to my master list. :P They are under the creativity section - I realized I didn't really have any journaling goals! Journaling is very important to me, and it's become a part of who I am, but I really want to make a big, big, big goal for that. So I added these two:

- Write 3650 journal pages (0/3650) (This is basically ten year's worth of journal pages assuming I do a page-a-day thing, which I won't.)

- Do a PeJoWriDa (Personal Journal Writing Day), where I take the day and write 50 pages of a journal in one day)

Quantifying Can Be Fun

2008-01-27T23:06:00.000-08:00

Yar. So I realized that making goals is easier when you have something quantifiable to measure your progress in. :D Also, if you can make a tally towards fulfilling a goal, it makes you feel like you've made more progress if you have some hard evidence that you're 3/14 of the way through, instead of "well, I think I'm about a quarter of the way through".

So I edited some of the goals I've already made on my master list, and added a way to measure my progress in cold, hard numbers. Keep in mind, absolutely none of these goals are new! They're just ones I've already made and added some numbers to. Yay. I might have to change these later if, once I start working toward the goal, I realize I calculated incorrectly. Heheh. :)

Creativity:

Take 100 photos of everything I love about the town and surrounding area I live in before I leave for college (pictures taken: 0/100)
Start and fill up a "collection book" (pages filled: 0/150)
Compile 10 photo books (each with at least 30 pictures) of the things that mean a lot to me (photos compiled: 0/300)
Draw something in sequential art (panels drawn: 0/20)
Think up and create a regularly-updating themed blog for at least 50 posts (blog posts: 1/50)

Health/Personal:

Become a vegetarian for 31 days in a row or more (days gone: 0/31)
Live, for 365 days or more, in a place where they normally get sticking snow (days lived in such a place: 0/365)
Live by myself for 100 days or more (days lived alone: 0/100)

Impression:

Donate $500 or more to a single charity (money donated: $0/$500)
Clock 250 volunteer hours or more in 365 days (hours: 0/250, days: 0/365)

Okay, so some of these already were quantified, but I either changed it to an equivalent in smaller units (so it's easier to tally) or I added a tally at the end. :P

Oh! And I started working toward one of the goals today! I made a themed blog that will hopefully update once a week on Sundays. It's specific to my school, and it's about school life as the sort of student I am. But it's under a fake name. That's why my display name is now "Sara", because it's about as close to my name as a fish is similar to a camel. -_- So far, I've done one post - 49 more to go! It's either going to be this blog or another one which I have an idea for (either one that's like "a new fact each day" or "music that goes with pictures"). But hey! That's another red goal! Yay! :D

Goals Master List

2008-01-23T20:51:00.000-08:00

TRAVEL:
- Go to somewhere in every normally-traveled continent (2/6) (still need: South America, Europe, Africa, Australia)
- Go to every country in the United Kingdom + Ireland (0/5) (still need: Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales)
- Go to Italy
- Go to Japan for a month or more
- Go to New Zealand and Australia (0/2) (still need: New Zealand, Australia)
- Go back to Wyoming (Grant Teton area)
- Go back to Arizona and Utah (or Southwest in general) and stay awhile
- See more of California - especially the far north and the far south - before I move out of state (new places I've seen since starting this: 6/25) (seen: deYoung Museum in San Francisco, San Diego, UCSD, UCI, full UCLA campus, Westwood in LA)
- Be able to fill a photo book with 100 photos of 100 different National Parks/Monuments/etc. (5/100)
- Go on an overnight train trip through the western United States
- Visit every state in the USA, with a photo from each (state photos compiled: 4/50)
CREATIVITY:
- Take 100 (specific) photos of everything I love about the town and surrounding area I live in before I leave for college (pictures taken: 14/100)
- Start and fill up a "collection book" (pages filled: 0/150)
- Write at least two novel drafts each year! (started drafts: 1/2, completed drafts: 0/2)
- Compile 10 photo books (each with at least 30 pictures) of the things that mean a lot to me (photos compiled: 0/300)
- Get something published not through self-publication or through the school
- Make a book, and use it as a journal
- Draw something in sequential art (panels drawn: 0/20)
- Make 1000 cranes and hang them together (0/1000)
- Think up and create a regularly-updating themed blog for at least 50 posts (blog posts: 8/50)
- Write 3650 journal pages - or ten year's worth of journal pages if I were able to do the page-a-day thing (728/3650) (I need to verify this number)
- Do a PeJoWriDa (Personal Journal Writing Day), where I take the day for myself and write 50 pages of a journal in one day
EDUCATION:
- Take a class in creative writing
- Take a class in photography, drawing, or another visual art
- Become fluent in Japanese
- Learn Mandarin
- Learn at least one of the following: Korean, Cantonese, Arabic, Italian
- Study abroad somewhere! Anywhere!
HEALTH/PERSONAL:
- Become very fit...
- Become a vegetarian for 31 days or more (days gone: 0/31)
- Tell someone I like that I like them
- Go on a date
- Either have or adopt a child
- Live, for 365 days or more, somewhere where they get actual (sticking) snow (days lived in such a place: 0/365)
- Be able to live by myself for 100 days or more (0/100)
- 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 blood (I've signed up to do it on Monday, March 17!)
- Donate $500 or more to a single charity (money donated: $0/$500)
- Help take out invasive plants and plant native ones
- Spend a day of walking around wherever I am and picking up trash
- Sponsor a child
- Create some sort of fundraiser for a charity
- Clock 250 volunteer hours in 365 days (hours: 0/250, days: 0/365)
- Adopt an animal from a shelter that is unwanted for some reason
- Donate 1,000,000 grains of rice through FreeRice (grains donated: 3,100/1,000,000)
- Pay for a stranger's meal anonymously
INSANE:
- Go parasailing, hangliding, skydiving, or something that mimics flying through the air!
- Go scuba diving
- Travel by myself to a place I've never been to, outside of any major international cities, where I know nobody and know none of the language, and stay there for two weeks or more
- Show up at an airport with money, passport, and luggage, then take the first flight I can

Key/Status:
- Completed: 0
- In progress: 11
- Haven't started: 39
- Total: 50

Some more goals...eheh?

2008-01-23T20:26:00.000-08:00

Ahaha. More goals to add to my list of stuff I wanna do in my life! ^_^;; I'm also adding a new category, since I think it's also important...although I think some of the stuff in health/personal could also go in this. It's called "impression", which is for the things I want to do to (hopefully) make the world a better place when I leave it than when I found it.

So here are the new additions (I'll make another post after this which will be the "master list" that will get edited):

CREATIVITY:
- Make 1000 cranes, and hang them together (like people in Japan always do)
- Think up and create a regularly-updating themed blog/website/something of that ilk
IMPRESSION:
- Donate blood
- Donate over $500 to one charity
- Help take out invasive plants and plant native ones
- Spend a day of walking around wherever I am and picking up trash
- Sponsor a child
- Create some sort of fundraiser for a charity (ideally: publish a book and donate all/most of the profits to an organization or charity that has some connection to the plot)
- Clock 250 volunteer hours in a year
- Adopt an animal from a shelter that is unwanted for some reason (i.e. too old, a physical/medical problem, deformity, personality trait - but one I feel I can handle)

Whoo! My first "hate mail"! :D

2008-01-21T22:06:00.000-08:00

Okay, so it stung a little bit...but hey, a wry little smile still spread on my face after the initial sting began to fade away.

See, I have a bunch of friends who've been really supportive of my writing, and since they all have Facebook...you get the picture, right? I have quite a few friends who post poems and little bits of creative writing in their notes, so I decided to jump on the bandwagon with bits and pieces of stuff for my novels.

And then I get this in my honesty box!

"u kno
i dun think nebody relli cares about ur urban legend or myth or whatnot.... its not that interesting and its pretty damn unoriginal. so if u can stop postin notes and spammin my note box.... then ya....

y not write stories more mature for ur age......."

HAHAHAHAHA YESSSSS FLAME! :D See, this means that somebody cares enough to not ignore my notes, but to actually go through the trouble of ANONYMOUSLY sending me a message telling me that they suck...you get it, right? It means people are at least noticing it.

Kind of like how some authors think the greatest honor is not to win an award or get on the NY Times bestseller list, but to get their books banned. First step to getting banned! Hahahah.

You know...maybe I should post a note in retaliation...hmmmm.

Goals in General

2008-01-06T18:48:00.000-08:00

Wow, this whole Big, Fun, Scary Adventure thing has really gotten my mind thinking about goals. I've come across so many people's lists of goals, and seeing what they want to accomplish in a month, in a year, in 1001 days...well, it's gotten me thinking of so many things that I want to accomplish, too!

Now, I don't want to add TOO many things to this year's list, or tweak it any more than I already have - that would just be a little stupid. I also think I should hold off on randomly making one of those Mission 101 lists (the one where you think up 101 goals you want to accomplish in 1001 days - which, as one person calculated, is a period of about 2 years and 9 months), since I don't want to end up with a rushed list (or an artificial one).

So maybe I'll just compile some goals in general...maybe on a special date or something, I'll bring together 101 goals I'd like to do in 1001 days. I mean, 2 years and 9 months is a long time, and will take me out of high school. In fact, if I started today (which I won't), I'll probably have already gotten so used to not being in high school, I'll barely be able to remember it as "present day"! Kind of like how it is with middle school...ahahah. ^_^;;

Perhaps it's because I have to go to school tomorrow after two weeks of winter break, and I'm on a break between an SAT practice test (3 hours and 45 minutes of FUN FUN FUN) and a review math assignment (and I hate math - and have a test on Wednesday) that I feel like anything is possible as long as I write it down as a goal RIGHT NOW...

I don't know.

But it might be nice to write down some goals for...I don't really know what sort of time period. A couple years? By the end of high school? 1001 days? By the end of college? By the birth/adoption of my first child? By the time I die? I don't know. Maybe, for these, I'll try to keep it down to a few years or less. Some of these super-long-term goals seem...a bit daunting. I'm not even sure if I know what to think up for them! (I mean, I'll probably live quite a few more decades, unless I reach an unlikely and untimely demise at, like, 30 or something - which would suck. I DON'T WANT TO DIE AT 30, THANKYOUVERYMUCH.)

SO ANYWAY! Since I've been compiling all my goals down in this blog, I guess I should continue to add any goals I think up here. Goals, ideas...it seems like a good place. Easier to type sometimes than it is to write in my journal. :P

So...some new goals, in fancy little sections for easy labeling (I hope):

TRAVEL
- Go to somewhere in every non-Antarctica continent (need to go to: South America, Africa, Europe, Australia) (have been to: North America, Asia)...and, if Antarctic travel becomes more widespread, then I'll go there :P
- Go to every country in the United Kingdom (I haven't ever been to Europe, by the way)
- Go to Italy
- Go to Japan for a month or more
- Go to New Zealand AND Australia (not just one!)
- Go back to Wyoming (Grant Teton area)
- Go back to Arizona and Utah (or Southwest in general) and STAY AWHILE
- See more of California - especially the far north and the far south - before I move out of state (either in college or after)
- Be able to fill a photo book with 100 photos of National Parks (or Monuments, etc.) I've been to - but with no more than 1 photo per park (so basically...go to 100 parks)
- Go on an overnight train trip through the western United States
CREATIVITY
- Take photos of everything I love about the town and surrounding area I live in before I leave for college
- Start and fill up a "collection book"
- Write multiple novel drafts each year!
- Compile photo books of the things that mean a lot to me
- Get published (eventually...something...right?)
- Make a book (maybe even the paper, too), and use it as a journal - even if it means writing on LINELESS PAGES (omg... :P )
- Draw some sort of thing in sequential art - even if the art itself sucks
EDUCATION
- Take a class in creative writing
- Take a class in photography or drawing or some sort of enjoyable art!
- Become fluent in Japanese (I've been studying for 5 years - but the classes are too easy)
- Learn Mandarin
- Learn at least one of the following: Korean, Cantonese, Arabic, Italian
- Study abroad somewhere! Anywhere!
HEALTH/PERSONAL
- Become very fit...
- Become a vegetarian for a month or more
- Tell someone I like that I like them
- Go on a date
- Either have or adopt a child (umm...this one is long-term, okay? :P )
- Live, for a year or more, somewhere where they get actual snow (and it would be nice if it stayed on the ground, so I would have to learn how to deal with it)
- Be able to live by myself for an extended period of time (like, not even with a roommate)
INSANE
- Go parasailing, hangliding, skydiving, or something that mimics flying through the air!
- Go scuba diving
- Travel by myself to a place I've never been to, outside of any major international cities, where I know nobody and know none of the language, and stay there for two weeks or more (such as...like...somewhere in rural Africa)

I'll probably edit or add to this later, but I'm 17 minutes late to starting my math assignment. Gaah, I hate math. >_<

12 for 12...eheh?

2008-01-04T18:50:00.000-08:00

So like...I know I already have my ten goals for the year (and I've already kind of added more to one of them so I could add some drawing if I wanted - this IS a BFS challenge, after all!)...but I saw some stuff about 365 (or 366, since 2008 is a leap year) and kinda wanted to do that, too...after all, it's a BFS challenge! :)

But then I realized that it was January 4, and it just seemed a little wrong to get involved with a 366 blog on the FOURTH DAY OF THE YEAR. I mean, what would happen to those three pictures from January 1-3? Would I just take an extra three pictures on the 4th? Or would I pick three days for the year when I would take three pictures? Or would I just finish my "year" on the 3rd of 2009?

My OCD-like self, nitpicky as always, decided that this was a bad idea, and I would just end up killing off more brain cells than needed. But since I was looking at the thread about 365 blogging on NaNoWriMo, I happened to stumble upon the second post of the thread, with was about 12 for 12 blogging.

This sort of blog seemed to suit my OCD calendar much better, since it involved taking twelve pictures on the twelfth of every month, and I had a whole 'nother week to prepare for my first day. Now, I have to admit, my obsessive nature is disappointed that I can't start taking pictures RIGHT NOW, but whatever. It should be fun. :)

So in addition to my other goals, I now have this thing. I figure that if I really like it, I can move into 365 blogging for 2009 (or maybe in addition to another 12 for 12 project). Oh, and if I succeed with my twelve pictures on every twelfth of the month, I'm going to put them into one of those iPhoto books that you can get as a holiday present for myself. :D I can't wait!

I've always admired photographers and their stunning pictures. Right now, my calendar for the year is a National Geographic one of twelve national parks. The pictures are absolutely stunning and inspiring, and I can't wait to maybe go somewhere stunning nearby and attempt to take pictures like the National Geographic photographers did. Maybe I'll take a picture of the calendar to share as one of my 144 pictures this year. ;)

Anyway, if anybody reads THIS blog, and wants to see my 12 for 12 blog (which I decided to name "Twelve for Twelve in Coastal California" for lack of anything better coming to mind), then mosey on over here: http://annie-12-12.blogspot.com/

Wish me luck, everyone! I've marked all the twelfths on my calendar in red...but I really hope I remember! ^_^;;

Year of Big, Fun, Scary Adventures (AKA 2008)

2008-01-02T19:38:00.000-08:00

Yup. I'm doing it. :D Anyway, here is what I said on the forums for BFS at NaNoWriMo:

"I think I'll do this this year. :) I always mean to make resolutions, but I never write them down or try to make serious goals...so I guess this is a good way to do it.

Anyway, here is a list. I'm going to put 10 items on it, and if I can truly accomplish 5 of them by the end of 2008, I think I'll consider this Big, Fun, Scary Adventure year a success. (I don't know if that's self-assuring or just sad...)

My list (off the top of my head on January 2...oops):

1. Start AND complete the first drafts of two novels by the end of the year - one of which (or maybe even not!) will be a NaNo novel in November. And do at least one of them "properly", with an outline and some ideas of characters, settings, and where I'm going.

2. Participate in and WIN Script Frenzy for the first time. As of right now...I know absolutely nothing about writing scripts. I know I want to write a movie script (I suppose I should refer to it as a "screenplay"), but other than that, I know nothing (not even what it will be about). So I suppose this goal involves figuring out how to go about writing a script and figuring out what I'll be writing about in the few months I have before April Fools' Day.

3. Exercise at least two times a week (and REGULARLY). This is hard for me because of my busy schedule, but I really need to get in shape (at least somewhat) and slim down (at least a little). I'm not fat by any standards, but I'm not stick-like, and I don't really want to run the risk of falling into the opposite extreme.

4. Write in my journal at least once a week with a (weekly) total of seven pages. For EVERY week of the year. Even if I miss one week, I'll consider this goal a failure. I considered doing the "write at least one page every day" thing, since if I really focus I can get a page done in five minutes or less, but I've had some crazy days before. So I figure seven pages per week is more realistic, but gives the same result and is still a bit daunting. I'd better get writing. :)

5. Write at least one short story, concept piece, scene-like short, or other form of creative writing each week. Most of these (or maybe all) can be answers to creative writing prompts - so "lists" or poems count, too. But one per week! (Or more.)

6. Enter at least one writing contest AND submit at least one short story to the school literary magazine. And they can't be the same story!

7. Talk to people more! Be more social! I want to hang out with friends on the weekends instead of keep to myself all the time (or spend time with parents for lack of anything better to do). I guess a quantitative goal would be...at least three social activities per month? I dunno...just...be more social and friendly. :)

8. This one is kinda vague for all reading but me (since it's personal), but become friends with a certain person, or at least talk to them more. I'm really shy, and our circles seem to avoid each other, but I figure I can at least make an effort. By the end of the school year, I want name recognition! >:(

9. Study more! Have homework started by half an hour after I get home, unless something weird happens (like I get sick). Keep an A in English and Japanese for the rest of the year, and it would be good to have an A in one of the three other core classes (Math Honors, AP History, Accelerated Physics). Oh, and not freaking out about grades and school (coughagaincough) would be good, too.

10. Get the job I want for the summer, and have lots of fun during it! :) But even if I don't get the specific job I want, I should still find a way to have fun doing whatever I have to do. And again, be more social with my coworkers, although I guess I already had this goal. :P

Yup-yuuuup. :) Lots of writing stuff! Better snap to it!"

So yeah. In short, with a 1-5 hardness scale (with 1 as the easiest, 5 as the hardest):

1. Two novels (including/plus NaNoWriMo '08) (2)
2. Script Frenzy '08 (3)
3. Regular exercising (twice a week) (3)
4. Regular journaling (seven pages per week) (2)
5. Regular creative writing (one piece per week) (2)
6. One contest + one submission (2)
7. More socializing (2)
8. "Progress" (4)
9. More studying/earlier start on homework/"good grades" (4)
10. Summer job (2)

Eheh. I have no 1's or 5's. ^_^;; I don't know whether that's optimistic, pessimistic, or...whatever...I KNOW! I'll order them in terms of hardness (with 1 as the easiest)! So how about THIS one:

1. Regular journaling
2. Regular creative writing
3. Summer job
4. Two novels
5. More socializing
6. One contest + one submission
7. Script Frenzy
8. Regular exercising
9. "Progress"
10. More studying

I guess this all boils down to better time management. ^_^;; I think the first three will get accomplished in some form or another, with the two novels and Script Frenzy being other likely contenders. I really hope I can accomplish at least one or two of the rest, though, with 5/9/10 being very important to me (especially 9...haha)!

WISH ME LUUUUUUUUCK! 8D

Triptych Thoughts

2007-12-21T19:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, so the main plot will be the slave trade! It will mostly be underground, especially in Tansy and...what's-his-face's country. Oh wait, what did I name him? Torm? I can't remember. :x He shall be Snaky for the purposes of this blog post from my friend's house, so I can work on Novel #2. -_-;;

And I think that for this to work, there have to be other species involved, other than the main "intelligent" three from Tansy's-and-Snaky's home country. I'm thinking something along the lines of a cat (haha, like Marlau!) or a bear (like the houma!). Maybe some of the big ones could be 'livestock" or for something like labor? I dunno. I guess that works? And since Tansy-and-Snaky come from a country with a social system that considers three species intelligent and ONLY those three species intelligent, they won't be used to the idea of accepting other species as being intelligent. And maybe, to mirror OUR mentality here in the real world (oh, the real world...haha), the other species won't be intelligent in the same way that the humans/birdthings/snakethings (hey, I've only been working on this for a spotty single week! Gimme a break that I don't know the names yet - it's not like I can crosscheck on MY FRIEND'S hijacked computer :P )

Anyway...I'm just going to spew for awhile (spew lists yay!) and see where it gets me. Who knows, maybe something useful will appear. :P

COUNTRIES:
- Tapan (the "triad system" country, the setting in the beginning, promotes species equality between the "three intelligent species", but is very strict about lifestyle and customs - if you defy them, you are shunned, and that's that...it's kind of smallish, and has a lot of dense forests. It is ruled by an oligarchy, with three leaders, one from each species)
- Mortek (mountainous country on the eastern border of Tapan. It has only birdthings as its intelligent species, and generally views humans and snakethings as less important or intelligent. It's also small, and very barren. Ruled by clan rule.)
- Ulua (on the north and west borders of Tapan. It is a flatlands country with some forests, with a mix of species each setting up their own small citystatethings in it. It's kind of in disarray that way - making it perfect for the slave trade, despite its generally accepting population)

Nehhhhhhhh I'm gonna be nice to my friend for now. :P (Edit: never mind)

You know what, I'm just gonna draw a map, and go from there with the whole country thing. -_-;;

So like...oh god, I have to do worldbuilding for this thing. This sucks. :/ Now I'm starting to like the idea of something that takes place in the real world. Oops. -_-;; Um maybe this will help:

Stuff that comes to mind that might be nice for my world to have:
- Clan warfare/disputes (oh dear god, it's Highness all over again)
- PIRATES (well, I'm listening to the soundtrack...)
- Ninja? (I guess I already do)
- Slave trade (dude, have you been reading?)
- OH BUT there is modern technology...didn't I already tell myself this? It's seems weird, but fun and cool (...but not Naruto...I hate Naruto)
- High school issues! (Tansy visits people in another country! And gets caught up in their HIGH SCHOOL DRAMA)
- Maybe relationships or "lackthereof" issues along those lines? (cuz I didn't feel like it for Highness...ugh, I'm still debating about considering Tansy/Snaky, or if I should go with my initial intuition of "ugggh no")
- A town that has a lot of stuff underground
- A town that has TREETOP HOUSES
- A town that "floats on the waves" (pontoons?)
- As an added issue: Tansy and Snaky might find a way to communicate with Cirrus (HAHA I REMEMBERED HIS NAME...sorry, Snaky, you know I love you). But not right away - they have to travel first.
- Tansy and Snaky act as tourists sometimes! I don't want this to be a standard fantasy "quest" thing. Those things suck. >:(
- ...Airplanes! (haha, back to my summer job all over again)
- Traveling on a ship! Like in Pirates of the Caribbean! (and we're back to the fact that I'm listening to the soundtrack again)
- Nurrr...I dunno...WINGED GRIZZLY BEARS. Or maybe not. I dunno. But grizzlies are so cool, and I dunno if the "winged grizzly bear quota" for Highness was filled enough by what's-his-face the houma spirit physician near the end. :P
- Insects! I think I should go for beetles instead of spiders this time. Why? I dunno. Spiders are hella cool, though...
- Ummmmmmmmmmmm...rainbows! OMG! NORTHERN LIGHTS. Or something. Hahah, I'm going to go see them yay! :D
- Hrm. I dunno, actually. Right now, I just want to write something in the real world. Um...short story time? -_-;;; I PROMISE TO WORK ON THIS, THOUGH. I'M JUST NOT QUITE IN THE MOOD FOR PLANNING. BUT I JUST ENDED SCHOOL, SO I GUESS I DESERVE IT. MAYBE. AGH, CAPSLOCK SUCKS. >:D

kajldkfjakdsjlfj

PrequeltoHighnesseventhoughitwillbedepressingbecausethemaincharacterwouldbePalor?

Okay, I'm done for now. :P

1000 Words of Ramen

2007-11-23T16:34:00.000-08:00

Alright, so one of my NaNoWriMo dares was to include ramen noodles. Bonus points would be if it took up at least 1000 words, if somebody had an allergic reaction to it, and if it wasn't being used for food. So far I've typed up 1184 words on the subject and voiced the fact that it was not going to be used for food, though Lampur hasn't yet had his allergic reaction to the noodles. But that will come, I promise!

Here is what I have so far on the fearsome ramen noodles:

When she grew close enough for me to see her clearly, I could see that the small container was a cup containing…
Wet noodles.
I blinked, not sure whether or not to believe what I saw.
When I looked again, sure enough, she still held a cup of small, soggy noodles.
“Jamie, why are you carrying wet noodles, wan?” I asked, raising one eyebrow (or whatever Irish wolfhounds had above their eyes).
She grinned. “These aren’t just any noodles. These are ramen.”
I gave her the same look. “Why does that matter, wan? They’re still noodles, and I fail to see how noodles will save Sen Rali from a trio of drunk teenagers, wan.”
She laughed, though she luckily laughed quietly enough to not draw any attention to the three of us. “Well yeah. But take a look – these ramen are no ordinary ramen!”
She held out the plastic Styrofoam cup toward us, and Marlau and I bent closer to take a good look at the ramen. It looked like what normal ramen probably looked like, as I really hadn’t seen ramen noodles before, just probably a bit soggier. Taking a look at the container, I assumed that ramen were supposed to be submerged in steamy broth, so I figured that one of the reasons this particular cup of ramen was unusual was that it had no visible broth, and that the noodles were simply soggy. However, this did not seem so far out of the realm of ordinary ramen to contribute to Jamie’s treatment of said cup of ramen noodles.
I took another good look. The ramen were soggy, yes, so they sort of stuck together and glistened in the light from the parking lot. I noticed that there were a few things that weren’t noodles in there, such as bloated little peas and carrots, as well as things that looked like tiny shriveled dehydrated shrimp that had suddenly been submerged in liquid, then promptly taken out. Or something. Either way, they failed to look appetizing, nutritious (unlike “real” shrimp from the Earth plane, which actually sounded quite tasty), or all that filling. However, these little additions to the mass of wet ramen noodles probably appeared in normal cups of ramen, so I doubted that they had any sort of importance in the matter.
Could the cup itself be important, I wondered, bending down to take a look. It was white with orange and red lettering and a triangle design, but I didn’t think this had any sort of effect on the ramen as a whole, either.
What could it have been?
I paused.
Then I realized that the alcohol smell grew stronger when I bent closer to the ramen. I had simply shrugged off the sharp, pungent smell since I first realized that berating Jamie for drinking would get me nowhere (since she was handling her drunken state quite admirably, probably due to years of learning how to cover it up, so I figured I should try to ignore it for the time being and focus on more pressing matters), but now I realized that I should have paid attention to my sense of smell before my sense of sight.
The thing that was unusual about the cup of ramen noodles was that it smelled very strongly of the alcohol that Jamie had been drinking.
The liquid that caused the noodles, peas, carrots, little shriveled shrimp, and any other nasty thing inside to become soggy was not any sort of normal broth, but the very same alcohol that Jamie (and probably Mister Dupuis) had been drinking.
Well…that was certainly…strange.
“Alcohol, Jamie, wan?” I asked, disappointed and confused. “Should I even ask for more information on the alcohol-filled ramen noodles, wan?”
Jamie grinned. “Yup.” I gave her a disapproving look, and she shrugged. “I was kinda hurting for a high of some sort, and I was also kinda hungry, and it seemed like a good idea at the time…”
“Ramen noodles that were soggy with alcohol, wan?” I repeated, shaking my head. Jamie really needed to have a good idea of how to use such a strange, despicable item to our advantage to grow even a little bit in my eyes.
“Yeah…but I also have this!”
Then she held up a rectangular black metal object that I didn’t recognize. I stole a glance at Marlau who, like me, had been eyeing the ramen noodles with a large amount of distaste. I realized that the yinto might not have had as good senses of smell as the peau, on account of their smaller noses, but that their noses must have still been pretty sharp. And that horrible alcohol stench wafting from the ramen cup wasn’t exactly subtle…
It sort of made my nose hurt, in fact. Stupid Jamie with her stupid ramen and her stupid alcohol…my nose really hurt, too!
I turned my gaze back to the object in Jamie’s hand. “What is it, wan?” I asked, not expecting a good answer.
She laughed, flicking a switch on the object. A tiny flame erupted on the edge of the object, casting a flickering orange glow on Jamie’s grinning face. “It’s a lighter!”
“You use that to smoke, don’t you, wan?” I asked, glaring at her.
“That’s not important.”
Groaning, I decided to just go along with it. “What does the lighter have to do with the…wan. Oh…wan."
“Do you get it?” Jamie asked, almost unable to contain her excitement.
Marlau pouted. “I have no idea,” she muttered, looking away. Apparently, House Jiral didn’t have to have her learn about lighters and alcohol-filled ramen noodles.
It amazed me, in fact, that the thought of how the lighter and the alcohol in the ramen related to each other, but I still managed to come across the idea. “Alcohol is flammable, right, wan?”
“Hell yeah!”
“So…we’re going to light the ramen on fire, wan?”
“Hella!”
“I assume ‘hella’ means ‘yes’ in this situation, then, wan?”
“Well, yeah!”
I looked at the cup of ramen noodles. So this was to be our main weapon against the drunken teenagers on the other side of the pickup truck?
Well, considering from what I was hearing from them, it sounded like they were currently ignoring Sen Rali, and dancing around and singing.
Using a flaming alcoholic noodle dish against such a trio suddenly seemed to make sense…possibly even poetic.
Ramen noodles…
Well, you had to give Jamie some credit for creativity, even if it was probably brought on by the thing we were going to light on fire to save our friend.
“Well, let’s go do it, wan.” Looking over at the dim football game in the distance, I sighed. “Let’s just make sure not to get caught, wan. The fire might draw attention, wan…”
Jamie scoffed at my nervousness. “Don't worry about it. If it was that easy to get caught doing something drunk and weird, don’t you think there would be more teens getting arrested?”
I didn’t feel like bringing up the fact that most of the time, such teenage humans weren’t dealing with flaming ramen noodles.

Hi, My Name is Jamie Kissinger

2007-11-15T19:27:00.000-08:00

Alright, so I just realized why I was having trouble prodding Jamie through some character development.

She had no clearly established character to begin with. Here I was, having Lampur whine about her and watching her go through some changes, when she never had a chance to get some clear footing in the character world!

So basically, I need more JAMIE. I blame this on having the thing be written in first person POV with the main character NOT as the narrator. Plus, it's making it seem like Lampur is either just as important or more important than Jamie, which is WRONGWRONGWRONG.

I can't go back and add stuff to the first couple of chapters to flesh Jamie out there, which is where she really NEEDS to be fleshed out (I wrote it in a very disjointed way that made it too difficult to continue with, so I jumped ahead to some more interesting events), since NaNoWriMo tells me not to. :P This means that either I have to go back and add it in after I finish (which I will probably do anyway, since she's the MAIN CHARACTER and all), or add it in later in the story, which I guess I will have to do.

So as of right now...I'm doing neither. I made a fresh new document, and decided to write little diary-like blurbs for Jamie Kissinger, in HER voice, focusing on HER thoughts, trying to get HER character down on paper (or, rather, computer). I'm trying to tie it into the plot so I can shove these little character gems into the story later, but hey...it's a start. And, so far, I got 758 words out of 'em that I can tack onto my wordcount in addition to the 200-something I randomly wrote into the actual story. (I'm still ahead in terms of overall wordcount, too, so it doesn't matter that it doesn't add up to 1667.)

So neh.

Jamie, please tell me more about yourself! (I'm just going to give up on Sen for now. I need JAMIE to be more of a person to me! BE MORE REAL, JAMIE, BE MORE REAL!)

Dear [INSERT]

2007-11-12T15:30:00.000-08:00

Today I passed the 21k mark! I'm so happy to be AHEAD of my word count, as opposed to behind. I'm proud of myself for catching up over the weekend...then getting a day ahead! That will be good for this week...ew, school. Oh, well, at least there are only four days of school this week!

Anyway, while taking a break from writing yesterday, I posted in the Dear [INSERT] thread on the Fantasy forum of the NaNoWriMo forums. Here is what I put:

Dear Jamie,
Give Lampur a break, and stop freaking out when you hear Polly's name. Yes, I know you're going to kill me now that I've said it. And no, I won't change the end of the story, and swearing at me and calling me names won't help. Oh, and please stop eyeing all those liquor stores - I won't order Lampur and Sen to loosen up on controlling how you spend your money. Sorry, kid, but you're going to have to suffer through cold turkey on all that.
Please stop making death threats,
Your "Mother"

Dear Sen,
Why are you so hard to write? Stop being so cryptic, and tell me what you want! Do you have evil plans for Jamie? Or do you just have your own agenda? What are you DOING right now? And, more importantly, what are you GOING to do? Please stop telling me right before (or after - I hate this) I write it down, you're stressing me out!
Signed with nervousness and stress,
Your Unwilling Minion (I think...)

Dear Lampur,
Hey, man, chill. Jamie's doing the best she can. Sort of. And stop rambling so much - I thank you SO MUCH for getting my word count up, but let's move the story along! I mean, with great power (FIRST PERSON POINT OF VIEW, thankyouverymuch) comes great responsibility, and all that jazz. Oh, and stop telling the story so disjointedly. My Inner Editor wants you to know that linear stories are much easier to edit.
But dude, I love you so much compared to Mister Inner Editor (or is it miss?). You are awesome. Just slow. But you get my word count up, so I guess I shouldn't complain...
Your friend (who thanks you for being easier to write than Jamie and Sen),
Your Loving Author

Dear Polly,
I'm sorry you're dead. Get over it. Or wait - have you already gotten over it? You need to tell me...please?
Confused in California,
Your Grim Reaper

Dear Unnamed Younger Brother,
So...um...your name. You wanna tell me what it is?
Respectfully,
Your Creator

Dear Cast of Highness,
Hahah, you people are WEIRD. :D
LOLing outside your world,
Your GOD(dess)

School VS Highness

2007-11-08T23:34:00.000-08:00

Alright, so Highness is doing okay in the VS School battle...though I had NO TIME yet today to write. :( I've been always ahead or on top of the word count...up until today, that is. (My profile just says I wasn't because I forgot to update my word count on one of the first couple of days, or something.) I really hope I can catch up tomorrow or something...I reallyreallyreally want to reach 50,000 words.

Currently I'm at 12150 words. I need to be at 13336...

Anyway, I've got some great inspiration for the plot of my novel...but I just remembered I posted in the dares thread on the NaNoWriMo Forums awhile back! So after some digging, I finally found my post (from October 29), and here is what I had to say for myself:

Still building my plot, so random funny dares might help with a few chapters. :)

I am taking:
- Pick a side character, any side character. When this side character was a small child, instead of a stuffed animal, he (or she) carried around and snuggled a knitted left mitten made of soft purple wool. They called it by two names, the second one beginning with 'Mc'. (example: Lala McPinny, Georgie McNoopsie, Mr. McNuttio) (and the mitten, in my novel, will be called...hmm...Red McToma) (Suggested by Fireblade K'Chona)
- "Come to the dark side, we have cookies."
+++1 if the character saying that is actually telling the truth about the cookie thing
+++2 if the character is actually a 'light' sider (gonna try to do all the extra things - no clue how yet, though) (Suggested by LadyAbby)
- Include ramen.
+Bonus if over 1000 words are devoted to the ramen.
++If somebody has an allergic reaction to the ramen.
+++If the ramen isn't even being used as food. (I actually have an idea for these... :P ) (Suggested by Greenling)

And since I decided to take three...I'll leave three as well.

Dare 1:
- Include a singing hairless cat.
BP: If it sings in another language.
DBP: If the song is never translated, so nobody knows what it means (not even the reader, unless they know the language)
TBP: If the song's meaning is actually important to the plot, but since nobody understands it...

Dare 2:
- Have your main character say this: "But honey, I thought the moon was made of SWISS cheese."
BP: If the moon is really made of swiss cheese
DBP: If "the moon" being referred to isn't any sort of celestial object whatsoever
TBP: If this results in a major turning point in the plot

Dare 3:
- Have a bunch of pairings that are completely reasonable and believeable for the first half of the novel, then have EVERYBODY switch partners for the second half.
BP: If this is done abruptly and without any sort of explanation
DBP: If this results in one or more characters ending up in a relationship that goes against their sexual preferences (like if they're a straight woman, have them in a relationship with another woman)
TBP: If they stay this way without complaining or questioning too much

So yes. I am taking all of the dares I committed myself to ALL THE WAY.

So for the mitten one, the purple woolen mitten, Red McToma, belonged to Polly. Maybe I can make this significant to the little bit of plotness I thought up for Polly? ;) I dunno how, though. I'm thinking Jamie will say the cookie thing, and the "dark side" is just her druggie friends, or something. Meh. As for the ramen, I'm thinking a chapter will involve an unorthodox usage of Cup Ramen in order to fend off something, and then Lampur has an allegeric reaction. Mwahaha, I love making Lampur suffer! >:)

It starts!

2007-11-01T00:59:00.000-07:00

So much stuff I managed to think up in 603 words (and that's 602 words of story - my title is only one word: "Highness"). :P

But I'm procrastinating...

I'm just excited to begin!

Already, I have some new characters. And hella terms...

Polly/Kiu Lishan: little kid, heiress in House Lishan
Ki Lishan: Polly's mom maybe
Unnamed peau: the narratorrrrrr!

And some stuff:

House Lishan: Polly's family, wealthy
Liandou: the region Polly lives in
Ki: "miss" (adult)
Kiu: "miss" (child)
Peau: guardian (or something)

And the narrator is polytheistic. Or something.

And Polly is dead. (Or something? No.)

Bahahahah.

PROLOGUE IS OVER. NOW THE STORY CAN BEGIN! :D

Jamie Kissinger

2007-10-29T19:33:00.000-07:00

The last name came outta nowhere, but I guess it fits. :P Anyway, I'm going to brainstorm a few things about Jamie in this post. She's the main character in my up-and-coming NaNoWriMo novel, and I can use all the help I can get in planning it out. I like to type, though I'm trying to scrounge up a small notebook or composition book I can take elsewhere to jot stuff in in, so a blog might be a good place to put some notes. I think a blog would be more user-friendly to me than a Word file - I seriously dislike doing planning stuff like this in a Word file. Though I still might make a "novel notes" Word file, as per Mr. Chris Baty's suggestion in No Plot, No Problem, but I think I'll do that for when I'm actually writing the novel.

Anyway...so right now, I have a FULL name for Jamie (I'm giving her the middle name "Audrey", too, because I FEEL LIKE IT), and a person in real life who I'm basing her off of...a person I don't know that well, I might add. So this brainstorm session is going to be for Jamie at some point in her life. Let's hope I get some helpful information!

First, a basic character sheet I used during a brief "I wanna be a writer phase" in seventh grade (I think):

Name: Jamie Audrey Kissinger
Personaity: Kind of gruff on the outside, usually in a bad mood (thanks to certain substances), but somewhat friendly when in a good mood and not under influence
Description: About 5'4", died black curly long-ish hair, brown eyes, pale skin, stocky figure, caucasian face, usually wears black, dark, or greyscale colors, generally wears skinny jeans with less-tight shirts (low-cut), black nail polish, black eyeliner, and multiple ear piercings.
Good qualities: Somewhat attractive (to certain people), funny when in a good mood, friendly when in a good mood, likes to work with animals - especially reptiles (and is generally calmer around them), good at visual art (especially painting/drawing)
Bad qualities: Addiction-easy, usually in a bad mood, doesn't try in school, doesn't care too much about the future, bad relationship with parents, ignores people a lot, not friendly when in a bad mood
Favorites: Art, anything to escape reality with, spicy food, swimming, hanging around the animals at the shelter, certain people at certain times, the rain
Hates: Many people at many times, schoolwork, people who are better than her at anything, super-salty food, running, reality, her life, when the sky mocks her life with clear sunny days
Weird qualities: Wakes up every weekday morning at 6:27 AM without fail (unless seriously sick), she splatter-painted her blue car with white and darker blue paint, she hates wearing anything around her left wrist, she hates it when her black nail polish is COMPLETELY unchipped (so she always puts a chip in right away)
Reaction to a bad thing: Drown out the badness in something mind-altering

And here are some quizzes from Facebook (haha) that I'll steal and have Jamie fill out the answers for! :P All in the name of...homework procrastination. Hahah. I need a break from physics.

40 'Off the Wall' Questions

1.) What side of the heart do you draw first?
Left.

2.) Can you dive without plugging your nose?
Yeah. People who can't are stupid.

3.) What color is your razor?
Black, but the blade is metal.

4.) What is your blood-type?
AB.

5.) Who would you want to be tied to for 24 hours?
Nobody. Or somebody who would shut up and not annoy the hell out of me.

6.) Where would you go to live for the rest of your life if you could?
Near the ocean, where I can paint or something. I don't care.

7.) How do you feel about carrots?
...Screw carrots...or just eat them.

8.) How many chairs at the dining room table?
Two, but I put stuff in one.

9.) Which Spice Girl is the best?
They suck...

10.) What's your favorite color?
Red.

11.) What's your least favorite animal?
I dunno...caterpillars are kind of creepy.

12.) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with your bf/gf?
DON'T HAVE ONE. If I did, it would be something not for the eyes of little kiddies.

13.) What's your favorite kind of gum?
Doesn't matter as long as it covers up smell.

14.) Do you scrapbook?
Hell no, that's lame.

15.) Do you use words that you don't know the meaning to?
No, who cares?

16.) Do you like to sleep?
Sleep or sleep AROUND?

17.) Do you know which United States states don't use Daylight savings?
Don't. Care.

18.) Do you know the song Total Eclipse of the Heart?
No.

19.) Do you want a bright yellow '06 Mustang?
Ew, no. Blue Toyota Prius is fine right now, since I splatter-painted it. It's kind of lame still, but I do save on gas.

20.) What's something you've always wanted?
SOMEBODY ELSE'S LIFE.

21.) Do you have hairy legs?
Hell no.

22.) What does "Semper Fidelis" stand for?
How much I don't care about Latin or Greek or whatever it is?

23.) Would you rather swim in the ocean or a lake?
Ocean. Lakes are boring.

24.) Do you wear a lot of black?
What do you think?

25.) Describe your hair?
Dyed black, curly, kinda messy, past shoulder-length.

26.) Who is your best friend?
Some random person who gives me stuff.

30.) Do you have a tan?
I did, but it went away when I quit swim team.

31.) Are you a computer addict?
Not really.

32.) Do you enjoy spending time with your mother?
Hell. NO.

33.) Are you a sugar freak?
Sugar is for the weak.

34.) Do you like orange juice?
Only without pulp.

35.) What sign are you?
Um...horse...and Taurus. I think.

36.) Can you count to ten in more than one language?
I might remember enough Spanish to say it in another language, but I don't feel like trying to.

37.) Who did you copy this from?
Some random person. I don't remember.

38.) How do you know them?
Don't remember them.

39.) Have you kissed anyone in the past week?
Probably.

40.) What are your plans for this weekend?
Working, hanging out, volunteering...painting maybe. Dunno.

Jamie's weird. O_o

Oh hey look, a blog

2007-10-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

Spontaneity reigns supreme in my life. :)

Hey there, I'm Annie. Nice to meet you, if there are any readers at all.

Like I said indirectly, this was a spontaneous decision. There was no real logic behind it, and although I've always thought it would be cool to have a blog (just for the sake of having a blog), I have no idea what to do with this blog now that I have it. Did that sentence even make sense? I sure hope so. I don't really understand why I have this blog, because it's not like I don't have a real-life journal or anything...and besides, I don't think I'd want to spread my deep dark secrets (do I even have any?) over the web. :P

Smilies... :D

Anyway, I guess I'll think up a reason for this blog's existence soon enough. I got it because NaNoWriMo was talking about LiveJournal, and I remembered I had a Gmail account (two, actually), and I could make one through Blogger. Not sure that's easier than LiveJournal, but whatever.

Hey look, I have a blog now! And it's called Fizzly Imagination! No clue where that came from.

Maybe I'll use this for NaNoWriMo? I sure as heck need to figure out what I'll be writing about. I just finished No Plot, No Problem, the book by Chris Baty (the guy who founded NaNoWriMo), and I just realized I should have been planning my novel, at least to some extent. He recommended getting a little notebook to jot down stuff...I haven't done anything other than pick my main character and give her a name (Jamie).

Other than that, though, Jamie's pretty much all I've got. And I don't even have much on Jamie...eheheh.

So maybe I'll use this to brainstorm? Ehhh...maybe it'll work. I think other NaNoWriMo people are brainstorming and getting ideas through their blogs (actually, I know, since I've seen one), so maybe I should follow suit.

Eh, in any case...I'm super excited for Thursday! Day 1 of NaNoWriMo! I've never seriously done this before (I pondered it last year and I think fulfilled one day's worth of words, but then it fizzled out because I couldn't access the site, and therefore couldn't sign up, and didn't feel like doing it completely on my own), so I'm really excited.

Mwahaha. Blogs are...fun? :D (Bye bye?)