Merry Christmas Eve Eve!

Surely that makes some semblance of sense. Christmas Eve is tomorrow, which is the day before Christmas, so it's Christmas Eve Eve today. Anyway, I had actual content today, at least a little bit... oh yeah! I managed to tear myself away from Minecraft enough to get my BFS goals sorted out. Here we go, in order of when they're to be accomplished.

• Participate in NaBloPoMo (January)
• Take the ACT again (February 12th)
• Finish Fictionpress story (February 25th)
• Finish Latin Course (March 11th)
• Edit Crystal Frontier (May 25th)
• Complete Italian course (March 13th - August 11th)
• Write/Translate a story in/into Ganyi. Say, at least 5,000 words? (October 31st)
• Participate in NaNoWriMo (November)

There. That gives me all of December off for relaxation and finals, since I imagine I'll be in college then. That's why the majority of these goals are before school would start. I can only cram so much into those months though, so I've got my Ganyi goal just to be finished before November. November is November, after all.

I should probably explain and quantify these goals. NaBloPoMo will be not quite daily. I'll take Sundays off, but I'll plan to post every other day of the week. The ACT is the ACT, but my goal is to get a better math score, since I now know at least something of Trigonometric Functions. That Fictionpress story just needs finishing, and I'd like it to be done by March, which is NaNoEdMo. I plan to start editing Crystal Frontier then, and I just figured I'd give myself extra time for that.

Wow, the school year's not even quite done for me yet. I'm a little tired of not finishing things, so my latin course will be done before school's out, and then I start my new Italian book, which I would like finished by the time I start college, wherever that happens to be. It probably won't start until after the 11th, right? They already start sickeningly early. Anyway! short summer for me.

My Ganyi goal may be put off for a while, and/or just take a long time. It doesn't have to be long, just 5,000 words, but it's in a different language, and one I'm making up, no less. That doesn't particularly make things easier.

November is NaNoWriMo. This is an invariable law of the universe. I will participate in NaNoWriMo, and then I will pass out, wake up, and most likely begin studying for finals. Thus the empty December.

Just because I want to rehash everything, my month-by-month schedule looks like this:

January: NaBloPoMo, Latin, Fictionpress, School

February: ACT, Latin, Fictionpress, School

March: Crystal Frontier, Latin, Italian, School

May: Crystal Frontier, Italian, School

June: Italian

July: Italian, probably at least start on the Ganyi thing

August: Italian, Ganyi, College

September: Ganyi, College, plotting?

October: Ganyi, College, Plotting

November: NaNoWriMo, College

December: Finals

Ok then! June is empty. That'll probably be when any summer noveling gets done.

Uhm, that's probably enough for now, yeah?

Hmm... It's December...

Which means I suppose it's time to think about Big Fun Scary Goals. Unfortunately, a year is kind of a vague deadline to finish these things, so I may take a more structured approach. Brainstorming stuff, then. For today's post, we'll start with the stuff I'd like to get done:

• Work Italian into an actual conversational language for myself
• Begin work on Swahili
• Get Ganyi somewhat functional
• Finish editing Crystal Frontier
• Maybe get a little bit of a plot on paper for yet another draft of Crystal Glare?
• Participate in NaBloPoMo (I'm thinking January for this? Maybe a little modified to take Sundays off)
• Take the ACT and get a better score
• Find a college
• Start college
• Finish that one Yavn story I've been putting on Fictionpress and get the whole thing on there. That means editing the dang thing too.
• Get another summer novel written, I suppose
• Of course win NaNoWriMo.
• Wait, maybe make that help make sure my mom wins NaNoWriMo this year, whether I do or not.
• So maybe I should make that "finish NaNoWriMo in a week or two so my mom can have the rest of the month to write her brains out."
• Ouch. 50,000 words in a week.
• Oh, and I wouldn't mind actually finishing my Latin course either. It's helpful for language learning and making, I've found. Stupid cases and tenses and conjugations.

Hm, lots of bullets xD anyway, somebody remind me next week or something to get these into monthly schedules or something. I was thinking maybe finishing my Italian and Latin courses by September, and when school starts I start Swahili, under the careful tutorship of my parents and maybe a few more books. Ganyi perhaps should be put into the actionable goal of a novel or so many stories written in the language.

Speaking of! I need to do another worldbuilding novel for another country. I think it's going to be a nomadic people, and their language is gonna be an isolating one. I should learn Mandarin for research on that, I guess.

Oh Hey, I'm Done

Saturday I finished, just before heading off to see Harry Potter. I took the time to shower, but that was even a close call. As a result, I didn't get to validate my wordcount and all that until Sunday. Oh well. I'm trying to remember... finishing on the 20th might not be my fastest time for wordcount, but I'm pretty sure it's my fastest for finishing the novel. I love it when a plan comes together. Yiridi and Poeyan died, Derad and Antrin got to move on with life... happiness. I probably didn't handle my plot very well, as usual, but it's NaNo, so I don't care. I don't.


I probably missed a few scenes (almost definitely the epilogue) on description, but I did say to the best of my ability, didn't I? So anyway, I managed to include a lot more description than usual. I'm pretty pleased with that. Technically I always have some description in a scene, because whenever someone does anything I describe that, but we were talking intentional appearance description and such-like. Uhm, anyway, I think I might get my map.

Now that NaNo's done, I can resume working on origami Christmas decorations and working on a few recorded songs (which is kind of a secret project for a friend's family so I won't talk about it much, even though none of them read my blog), things like that. I'm taking the week off of school, since if I take off I might as well take a whole week or else mess up my schedule. I need to read a few day's worth of Frankenstein, but that's pretty much all the "homework" I have. I also need to finish up the story I started posting to FictionPress, and maybe work on editing Crystal Frontier a little bit more, since I have a few friends wanting to read that one too.

And Christmas lists. Crud. I hate making those.

Nearing the Finish Line!

Probably a short post today. My novel is nearing completion (I miscalculated my chapters before. I usually have 12 chapters in a book, but I've only got 10 in this one), and I have... 43,000-odd words as of last night. I was hoping maybe to finish up my word goal and story by the time we head out to see Harry Potter 7 Part 1 this evening, but I don't know if I'll manage it. 6,000 or so words in a day, with a later start than I wanted and an earlier finish than possibly desirable? I'm going to be too tired to write by the time I get home. Hmm... Eh, piece of cake. Six or seven hours of writing are still in the day. If I can just hide and keep myself away from distractions, like the computer and my blog. I owe my non-existent readers an update, don't I? Or maybe not.

Anyway, with the scenes I have left and the words I have left I need about 2300 words per scene or 4600 words per chapter, not including epilogue, but of course epilogues are short for me. My prologues are usually longer than my epilogues. Just a little finishing up touch because I can't resist. I usually should just edit them out. Oh well.

Um, what else... Rapa is planning on doing the absolutely insane thing of writing virtually all of her 50,000 during Thanksgiving break. Oh dear. She's got a few thousand, but that's still 40,000+ to be written in something like nine days, three of which are spent at her mom's. But I should probably poke her into posting that on her own blog, shouldn't I?

Wordwars and candy! And fudge. Lots of fudge.

It's Not Just for Blog Posts!

Did you know that there's this thing called rambling? I tend to employ it a lot when I'm blogging, but I heard something new Saturday: this rambling thing can be used in novels too. So instead of advancing my plot -- which is running out -- on Saturday night, I spent near 2,000 words sending my characters on a tour of the capital city. Since then I've stayed in chapter five, and I'm close to 20,000 words now. Worries quickly vanish in the face of the ramble!

Anyway, it's Week Two!

There May be a Slight Problem...

NaNoWriMo is perking along happily (the verb "to perk along" might make the adverb "happy" redundant, but I'm not sure), and the awesome people at OLL even managed to get their site to speed up finally! Poor NaNoSite...

Anyway, all might not be well with my novel. I have a plot. That's not the problem. I love my plot. That's not the problem either (the plot isn't the problem on two counts!) My characters are interesting enough, I suppose, and I've described most of them adequately. I should add more description to Antrin. I forgot, ok? But that's not the problem I'm speaking of.

I've been doing a little under a chapter a day. Nice pace, for when I want to finish a novel, but here's the problem. My wordcount says I'll only be 26% of the way to 50,000 words by the end of today (assuming I write just my usual 2,000 words). With 12 chapters, I'm nearly halfway through my book, but only a quarter of the way to the goal. This is a slight problem, and now is the time to correct it, yes? Usually my later chapters will stretch longer anyway, but now I need to not worry about curtailing conversations and suchlike. Getting bored with them is not a good excuse (well, if they're really really boring.... maybe). I need words!

And it's only Day 5.

I Slept in Today...

Kinda. In truth it was mostly a case of comfy bed syndrome. At any rate, I haven't gotten anything written yet today. So! I have a plan. I will write some 500 words, and then I get to practice a song on piano. Then another 500, followed by another song. Repeat until I have 2,000. After that I get to play just about as much as I want.

We'll see how this works. Other than that, NaNo has been going well. I could technically skip today if I wanted, but I'm not going to. I'm not.

It's Tomorrow!

So I'm going through everything, making sure my things are in order for tomorrow, and I remember I haven't blogged about it being so close. Not that people really need reminding about it on my blog, but why not?

Tomorrow I'll be getting up early, reading my Bible, putting my hair back, putting my writing hat on, pulling on hoodie and writing socks, fingerless gloves, blanket, starting music, and pounding out 2,000 words before anything else happens. Well, maybe herbal tea will happen. I dunno. After that I can fling myself into the morning of school work (physics focusing on Newton's Laws, Algebra focusing on imaginary numbers, John Milton focusing on Paradise Lost, possibly Latin focusing on who-knows-what. I haven't done any good Latin in a while), and after lunch it's off to a friend's for piano lessons and Italian lessons and more writing. Home will bring... eh, probably some lazing around or finishing up school, followed by perhaps another small burst of writing, followed by bed.

The idea is that between those two or three sessions of writing, I get 5,000 words written tomorrow, so I can have a good start. Right this second I'm all hyper from a halloween party, so it all sounds like piece of cake. We'll see what happens tomorrow when I'm sleepy. I may need tea of some sort. Or exercise, like a few sit-ups before working. Ew. But whatever it takes, right? Right?

At least my plot's definitely going to hold my attention this year. If it lasts 50,000 words, I'm golden. Or purple, as that's the color of the winner's bars. If I run out of story... well, there are plenty of hallucination scenes that can be stretched into infinity, if need be. Not to mention I'm writing more description this month. I'm not going to forget that. In fact, I'm going to write that on a sticky note or something and put it up where I can see it.

Off to NaNoPrep!

Less Than a Week Left O.o

My mom hates it when I remind her, but Monday next is November. That means writing like crazy. And hoping my room is clean. And, and... Stuff.

Right now I'm hoping that I can have 5k by this time next week. 2008 was my best NaNo so far I think, and I triumphantly started the month with a 5,000 word day. So technically by this time (11ish AM), I hope to have something more like 7,000 words.

Oh! This year I have goals! Goals are good, right? I...
A.) Want to finish my novel during the month, and
B.) Want to work majorly on description. As stated in my last post, that means I want all my locales and characters described in the manuscript, plus every scene (plot point thingy that I have on my timeline) must particularly contain some description. I can work on quality of the prose later, but for now I just want to put some in. I said that before, didn't I? Ok then.

All that's left for me to do is to really clean my room. And stop eating so much pre-Halloween candy. Oh, and finish making origami for that craft fair thing-a-ma-bob. Three more pieces and I'll call it good, I think.

I Need to Write Better Description

So maybe November isn't a good time to be working on my writing skills, other than churning out high wordcounts (although I don't know that I need a lot of work on that), but if I don't work on this sometime I'll forget or get lazy. But in the spirit of NaNoWriMo and not editing first drafts, my goal is to just actually write some. No scene should go by without some description. I should actually know what my characters look like.

I'm a story driven person, and so I'll usually end up writing action or dialog or even internal monologue (why are dialog and monologue spelled so differently? Maybe my spellcheck is thinking of a computer dialog box or something), which I suppose is all fine and good, except that a little description helps keep things realistic. I suppose I don't have to be all that poetic or anything (I fail at poetry), but a person should be described, locales should be made more real with description, stuff like that. So my goal is to specifically insert description into my scenes and areas in this November's draft. I suppose that means I need to actually think about what all that looks like...

Prep Moves Forward!

Finally I have my plot finished up. Now I just need to chat with my characters, if I want, and get my room clean. And I need to get most of my origami made for the 12th of NaNo... and I think that actually is all of what's left on my to do list. I have my wordcount spreadsheet printed off, and a sheet for tracking word war scores. Um... I need to make sure I can stay caught up on school and stuff, but interestingly enough I seem to recall I work better when I write in the morning. Rationing my time helps me ration my time better, I guess. I figure I'll be all right. I get Thanksgiving week off, if I'm not at 50k by then already.

I'd like to finish the novel this month. I don't think it'll be an issue, though. It's a pretty short story. I can get it to 50k though. This has at least a little more meat on it than my weekend venture, so I think I can stretch it, if it comes to that.

I should go clean my room.

I'm Lazy...

I've hardly started on my NaNoPrep... I did make a to do list, but now I need to actually work on the thing. I still have to clean my room thoroughly, and timeline my plot, and keep up with school, and make sure I have enough origami made for the thing... I have more, but now I've lost my to do list. I guess I should find that, huh?

I'm thinking about putting music stuff on my blog... I could probably upload little songs and compositions and stuff right to the blog. If Blogger doesn't have an easy way, it's only a Google away. But maybe that's a bad idea. Too many family members read this thing every once in a while. I'd be all embarrassed... not to mention the fact that anything I've managed to do something that doesn't sound like total and utter crud is at least prompted by a bit a friend of mine has already come up with. I need to get beyond theory, I guess. I always end up just doing boring stuff, and I can't get myself to do anything interesting. Or maybe I'm overly critical. Maybe a little bit of both. I have no problems with first drafts of novels, so why do I care about first drafts of songs? Fail.

The Pictures, as Promised!

Can I have my kitty back now? Oh wait, she’s just still in her room, meowing to be let out.

First up, you can see my writing hat over to the right, on my Neo. It’s a $200 dollar hat! Luckily, we got a ton of fireworks with it too. A Black Cat outlet we go to has stuff like that for spending enough money at the store. Last year my brother got a hat, this year I got it, kinda randomly, I don’t even really wear hats! Anyway, I never intended it to be a writing hat. I wore it shooting fireworks and such-like, worrying a bit that I’d stop wearing it, since I don’t usually wear hats anyway. I took it out to the woods with my Neo for writing though, and since then it’s taken over the position. I forgot about it during the Weekend of Insanity, until Sunday, when it was really Go-time. My hair goes back in a ponytail, my hat goes on, and I’m in the writing zone. Kinda like Chris Baty’s viking helmet. I should try and wear this on Day One of NaNo, to help boost my wordcount for a good buffer. Anyway, can I move on to my bromeliad now?

 

 

 

 

 

This one gets to be extra expositional. I don’t know the actual species of bromeliad this is, but I can at least give an overview.

Bromeliads are plants that hang out in the understory of a rainforest. You know, the ground level. They like to be in the Tree-Fall Gaps, where a tree’s fallen over and there’s a little patch of sunlight. Their root system is pretty much used only to hang on to the tree or dirt they’re in. They don’t particularly get water or nutrients from their roots. They form a little cup in their leaves, though (which are kind of cactus-like, by the way), and they’ll hold water in there. In fact, in a rainforest, they’ll have entire mini-ecosystems in there. Tadpoles, bugs, all sorts of stuff will hang out in that tiny pool. Anyway, it makes them really simple to water. All you have to do is make sure there’s a little water in that cup. There’s no reason to have their roots be wet or anything.

After a few years these will bloom (we don’t have any blooming right now, so the picture for this is from here). First comes up this kinda spiky cactus-y flower thing, and it’s pretty cool-looking, but then, a day or so later, these little flowers appear on the pink spiky thing! There are flowers on the flower! It’s the

best thing ever. Mine won’t be blooming for a while yet, but anyway. After they bloom, the bromeliad will start making pups. They just grow straight off the mother plant. Eventually, the mother dies, but my mom’s has given off something like 6 of them, and it bloomed last year. It might finally be done, though. I don’t know much about them.

Oh, and it should be noted that I haven’t particularly researched any of this stuff. It’s what my mom told me and what I remember from playing “Magic School Bus Explores the Rainforest.”

 

I had more news… oh! Yesterday was a particularly productive day. I got up early, blogged… that afternoon I went out to the woods and my treehouse to do some actual plotting. Now all I have to do is timeline it, and do some chatting with my characters if I so choose. In the evening I went to the lake with my dad, and finally accomplished what’s been my goal for two summers now. I got up on the long line barefooting! And faceplanted about six times in the process. It was a lot of fun though. Less frustrating than usual.

Today, I should make a to do list… the NaNoWriMo site relaunches tomorrow!

Wednesday: Random Musings Day

Not that I usually do anything but randomly muse, but today I think I'll devote an entire post to short, random statements. After the day's news: I got up and actually did some plotting today. Early morning plotting isn't going very well though, so I think I'll maybe to go afternoon plotting out in my treehouse. With my writing hat. My writing hat! I haven't talked about it. Remind me tomorrow.

Whenever I make a particular origami kusudama thing for an event or some such, I seem to have to make 25 or so of the same thing. Since I tend to procrastinate on getting paper and cutting it and folding it and putting them together, I rush through them all near my deadline. I don't suppose anyone else in the world ever does that... anyway, by the time I'm done, I'm so sick of the design that I think I'm never going to make another one again. But then... after a few months, I find myself making at least one more... it drives me nuts. And my fingers have it memorized how to fold the pieces. I hardly have to look.

It's an incredible blessing to have a computer that works with the printer, and networks with the other computers and such like. But... I miss one particular program I had on Ubuntu: Rhythmbox. It was a pretty simple interface thing, but what I loved about it was that I could listen to an internet radio station (Final Fantasy Radio, actually), and it would pop up briefly with the song title when the next song came on. You wouldn't believe how irritating it is to go back to listening somewhere without live updating of that kind of thing. You wouldn't believe how few music players actually do that. Right now I'm using RealPlayer. It doesn't pop up a little box or anything, but at least all I have to do is highlight it to find out the song name. I don't have to have a browser window open for it. Too bad Rhythmbox doesn't have a Windows distribution... I'll find something eventually, I guess, or just deal with it.

I've picked up my flute again, off and on a bit. I think I'm improving. I can typically hit the highest C (uh... C8, I think. Second-highest C on a full 88-key piano keyboard), and I can even remember the fingering for it. If I could just remember the fingerings for G7-B7... It really helps that I've found a website with flute sheets for all levels and pretty much all genres, so I'm never short of practice material. They even have a few video game tunes. Of course, I can play vocal sheets and quite a few piano melodies too, but it helps to have music written particularly for flue, especially if I want something a bit more challenging. Say, for practicing those really high notes? Time for The Queen of the Night Aria!

Tomorrow: pictures of my bromeliad and my writing hat, as well as exposition about both objects.

For the Record...

I have the most awesome mother EVAR. Seriously. Guess who's computer works! My mom took the thing into her room and made me leave her alone until it was fixed. It was a surprisingly short time. I have Windows 7 Starter back on, and I think I have everything set up again... wait, I forgot to add the wireless printer. Well, other than that, everything's all happy.

And since my computer works with an OS that I should have no problems navigating, and nothing is broken on it, there's absolutely no reason why I shouldn't be able to get up and plot tomorrow. Seriously. No reason.


Who wants to bet I sleep in tomorrow, too?

Grar, Again.

I hate my spiffy little netbook right now. Not only have I been unable to restore it to what it was before I put Ubuntu on there, and subsequently wiped the drive, I haven't been able to get any kind of Windows OS on it. I finally wiped the drive, because my mom and I were told that was why the restore disks we got from Gateway didn't work, but we're still getting the same error message. A Windows XP disk won't work, my mom's Vista disk is an upgrade and therefore can't be used for a clean install, my brother's Vista and 7 disks are both 64bit and therefore can't be used at all with my computer, being only compatible with 32bit.

I don't know why the XP disk won't work though, or why the recovery disks from Gateway won't. All I know is that it's driving me (and my mom) absolutely nuts. I'd be content with Ubuntu, if I could just get it to work with the printer. I hate having to email anything I find on my netbook to another computer just so I can print it. I know there's a way to set it up, and to get it to network with the Windows computers, but I'm not smart enough to know how, and at this point I just want the thing to work.

Grar.

I still haven't done any more plotting, and I haven't been able to get up early very well either. It would help if I didn't go to bed so late. The weather's been cooling off, bringing to mind memories of October, and therefore NaNoPrep. Also last year's NaNoWriMo, where I spent the first morning out in the car, with the cold, and with a cold, in the dark. I got to see some Seka though, when it got a little lighter. NaNo started on a Saturday that year, as I recall. We were in Southeast Kansas for a fun Halloween parade thing called Neewollah. It was fun, at least I got my words that day, I think.

Is it weird that I remember the Novembers because of NaNo? And that October instantly makes me think of NaNoWriMo? And that I tend to plan my entire life around November? Well, not my entire life. But even so... I'm insane, I'm sure, but it's a good insane, right?

Right?

Maybe I Should Make a To-Do List...

To Do Today:

• Get up early -- check.
• Plot -- uh...

I awoke to... What random song played on my mp3 player? I think it was "Tears in Heaven" by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I listened to it for a while, some weird dream logic drifting through my head.

Eventually I managed to get up, but instead of plotting I read a book all morning, and then kinda just lay around... I dozed off eventually I think, but not for very long. It's a step better than yesterday, when I didn't even get out of bed until 10, right?

I need to finish up my plot and do some character-building exercises and worldbuilding exercises, and, and...

Make a list. That too.

I had another topic today... It involves taking a picture though, and I'm too lazy to do that today. Maybe tomorrow, then.

Languages

For lack of a better subject to blog on, I'll ramble about languages in general a bit today. Or maybe you'll get lucky and I'll find something more interesting to ramble about, change gears, and then get tired of typing and give you an extra-short post.

Or, if you're unlucky, I'll ramble about languages, think of something else to ramble about, and just add it on to the end. Hm... ideas come already. Maybe I should save a few for later. Nah.

Anyway, I was talking about languages. At the moment I've been a little obsessed with them. I have a bit of a list in my head of languages I want to learn, in approximate order. First I need to get Italian to a good spot, and finish my Latin course. I don't care a whole lot about speaking Latin, seeing as it's a dead language, but I might as well finish my course. After that... I'd like to learn Swahili, and then German, or maybe Russian. Japanese is in there somewhere too... I think farther down the list though. It may move up or down, depending. Oh! And Spanish and French are both on there somewhere. I'm already on Italian and Latin, so I might as well add a few more Romance languages into the mix. They'll be piece of cake, relatively, and they say every language you learn makes the next one easier. Maybe after Swahili I'll learn Spanish. It'd be a useful one, unlike all the others I've been learning so far.

Oh, and there's Ganyi, the language I'm currently making up personal use. That'll be an ongoing project too. So I have four Romance languages (if I include Latin), uh... whatever German and Russian are, I think they're similar-ish, an oriental language, one based off of Bantu (that'd be Swahili), and one I'm making myself. Yikes. Stripes. I hope I like linguistics.

You know, I think I might. Maybe I could major in that. Not like I know exactly what jobs are in linguistics, but does that matter? I guess it does. Usually a person picks a major on what job they want. Can I pick a job based on the major I want? Will I like that job? I bet I can find something I like in just about any field, right? Well, maybe not fashion design, but you know what I mean.

Uhm... I actually had another thing to say. Oh! I actually got up this morning and did some plotting for this November's novel. It's got an exciting, if perhaps cliche, beginning. I just need an ending. It deals with revenge, and although I try not to care about cliches, I can't quite stand to write a novel if it's not interesting. I'm trying to decide if my character goes through with her revenge or not...

Oh never mind. Resolved. Yay for writing a post over multiple hours! Uhm, whatever else I had to say, I forgot.

More plotting tomorrow!

Grar.

I told Rapa I would blog if she blogged today, and she did, so now I have to. Um... I did kinda have a subject. Oh! I actually did something today. It was awesome.

Well, I did physics, math, latin and read an old poetry book (Canterbury Tales!) all this morning, and went to teach a piano lesson and study Italian in the afternoon. Busier than I'm used to being... Anyway, I'm a terrible piano teacher, and my friend and I are kinda stymied with Italian. We have a computer program we're working on, but I absolutely hate it, and I can't seem to get her to help me decide what else to study. I should just pick something and bring it over to her some week, but I hate dictating what we study, when I already spend the first part of our time giving her instructions on piano...

Anyway, I actually ordered a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" in Italian, so I'll start reading that through with the English copy, for some translation skill. I never seem to get the chance to use my Italian though. I need to just start writing someone. I used to have some pen pals that were also learning or knew Italian, but I've lost touch... Grar.

Maybe I'll start an Italian blog again. I've tried that before though, and always gave up. I keep doing things like that. Grar, again.

Uhm... I'll come up with something. Maybe I'll write a story in Italian. That means I need to plot, maybe in Italian. Ooh...

I Guess I Should Update About School...

And other such-like things. I started my senior year in high school this year, and I guess after that I'll have to pick somewhere to go to collage, and therefore what I want to major in, at least generally, and therefore what I want to do with my life. Crud. I hate decisions.

My problem is that I don't really want to commit to doing just one thing with my life. I like a lot of things; I don't know that I'm any good at them, but I like them none-the-less. Writing, languages, origami, music, math is pretty fun, too. I don't want to give any of them up really. I also don't know that I want to take any one of them and make it my job. They say that's the best way to ruin a hobby.

Eh, who am I kidding, I'm just afraid of decisions in general. I have to stick with something, which I've never particularly liked doing. But I'm not there yet. I just hope God will tell me what he wants me to do.

For the time being I have Algebra 2 and Pre-Calculus to do this year, Physics, Latin, and my literature course is called Survey of British Literature. It includes a lot of poetry, I've found out. Already I've read "Beowulf" and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and next up is "Canterbury Quintet." All of those are old stories in verse.

Latin's not actually going to make me a speaker of the language, but it seems to be giving me the grammar and a lot of vocabulary for learning the roots of words we use today.

What else... oh, it's my last year with my piano teacher too. As a matter of fact, she's retiring after I'm through. Sadness... she's got me on a lot of classical stuff, Invention #13, a Rachmaninoff Prelude, some other things I can't remember... oh! She wants me to learn Flight of the Bumblebee. That one scares me. All chromatic scales and stuff at ultra-high speed...

It's not too heavy of a load though, so the most important event of the year, NaNoWriMo, should still be do-able for me. I'll have to practice my piano more than sometimes, if I want my senior recital to be any good, but I always end up with plenty of time in the month anyway, when it comes down to it.

I finished a first sweep of editing a story I wrote a few summers ago. Originally it was over 100K, but I'm not sure what it is now. I'm in the middle of typing it up, and editing it again as I do. I'm not sure what exactly I want to do with it after that. Probably keep it uploaded on the web for me to forget all about, until I read it again, decide it's awful, and either trash the thing or write it all over again.

Speaking of! I realized what's wrong with my multi-NaNo story. Crystal Glare, the one I wrote first in '07, and rewrote this last NaNo, needs another rewrite. Not this NaNo, though. I think it'll be a project for later on. I'll be changing it rather drastically, actually. Maybe growing up my characters a little bit, splitting them up more. The whole thing has always been way to linear. I don't mind linear in some novels, but this thing read way too much like a video game. They knew where they needed to go, and yet I kept them all together, when they didn't really need them all? It made no sense. I'll throw in more plot and intrigue next time around. I just wish I hadn't already tried this thing twice. Oh well. This November I'll be writing about... what will I be writing about? Oh yeah! Another episode in Yavn. This one will border a bit on Sci-fi I think. I guess it's still Fantasy though, since it's not really Earth's future we're talking about. It'll probably be kinda steampunk-ish, if I ever get my plotting done. I've never been this far into the future of the land before. This should be exciting.

Yoikes and away!

So Maybe I'm Insane. Who Cares?

I meant to write this yesterday, but I was too tired to think straight by the time I could.

I won! I got all of my story written, and it came in at 30,213. I didn't finish until near 9:00 at night, but I did it.

Overall, the weekend was rather stressful. Getting up extra early, staying up later than I should have. Friday night my family and I went to Olive Garden to celebrate my brother's birthday, and so I didn't get to bed until a lot later than I wanted. I managed it though! I don't want to do that again very soon though. There are people who write 800,000 words in November for NaNoWriMo. How on earth do they do it? They have to write over 26,000 words every single day! I didn't even write half that and I was about to drop dead!

Anyway, next thing to work on is fixing my computer, and plotting for NaNoWriMo. I've convinced a friend of mine to do it with me this year, so I'm going to try and help her out with that, too. Wordcount charts, a copy of "No Plot? No Problem!" to lend her... I need to get things planned out or I'll never do them.

Yes, I Must be Insane... Day 2

Yesterday went fairly well, I suppose. I managed to get all 10,000 words that I needed that day, though I would've liked more buffer. As it was, I was only 238 words ahead of schedule. That's ok though, I'll build it today. My morning went on schedule, not as well as yesterday morning, but I won't be too picky so long as I get the requirement. I'm at 16,000 words for the weekend now, over half done. Today I build buffer for the trial of tomorrow...

I don't have to play tomorrow morning at church, but I'll still be there from 9:00 until 12:30, which is a sizable chunk to steal from me on the last day of a writing challenge. My plan is to have as much extra done as I can handle without killing myself, and then I'll get up early and write before church, and get writing as soon and as hard as possible after. If I could get about 2,000 extra today I'd be on schedule, since I can probably get 3,000 done before church.

I guess that means I should stop wasting words on blogs and get to writing the actual story, huh? There is the secondary goal of finishing the story, but things are going about on schedule there, too. I finished chapter six (marking the halfway point) at 16,564, so I'm not worried about finishing the story. What worries me is that I'll run out before I get to my 30,000.

Onward and upward!

Am I Insane? Day 1

So it's day one of my totally insane weekend of writing. So far I'm at close to 5,000 words of my daily 10,000. Still working chapter 1, though of course before that I had a prologue, and before that I had an introduction, because I like prologues and introductions are helpful to get me in the groove before writing, and they add words. Which helps.

I'm not a programmer, but that doesn't stop me from messing around with my computer. I recently got a little netbook, which came with Windows 7 Starter, which is kind of a lame operating system. I like Linux for messing with, and I figured that since I could install Ubuntu Linux right alongside Windows, I could make a switch easier, since I'm not very good with the whole coding thing. I've done this before, on another computer. So I install Ubuntu, but I see that it doesn't like to boot up very well. I look for a fix, and to do it I go to the root file system, which is where the computer keeps its really important startup files and such like. Actually, everything is ultimately in the root, but certain folders are protected, and certain things you can only do from the root. Anyway, I input the commands like I'm told, and I do something wrong, I don't know what, probably when I was trying to find the command to shut it down again. In the end, I deleted every scrap of data on my computer, not just Ubuntu but Windows 7. Facepalm.

In the end, I lost every file, but not really. I should have my OS and stuff backed up to an .iso CD, so I can restore everything just like it was. Minus some stuff I downloaded since then, but I can get those things back easily. The only thing I lost... one recording I made, and the music editor files for about four more. That's ok. The one I lost I never particularly liked anyway, and I wasn't going to edit the others any more, I didn't think. I wasn't quite happy enough with them for it to be worth that.

Anyway, I'm procrastinating. Right now I have about 6,000 words today, so 4,000 to go. I'd like to have some buffer, too, since I'll be at church about half the day on Sunday, it'd be nice to be ahead.

I shall write my words or die trying! Write or Die!

News!

I’ll just go ahead and skip the usual speech about habits and wondering where they ran off to, shall I? In fact, I’ve been getting back into the habit of getting up early in the morning. I’ve written another story this summer, a worldbuilding exploration tour of sorts, and now I’m finally editing my story from last summer. Other than that, not a whole lot’s been happening. Language making has been going well enough, I keep coming up with words and idioms, if I can remember to.

The 10th-12th of this month I’m embarking on an insane weekend writing project. There’s a contest that evidently is every Labor Day Weekend, called the 3-Day Novel Challenge. It costs money to enter, but there’s a chance of getting the story you write published. Too bad for them, I don’t particularly care about that kind of thing. A few friends and my mom and I are going to give it a shot the weekend after. There’s no official word goal, only that the story be started and completed in the same weekend, but I’m going to try for 30,000 words. Yikes. I tried to schedule my time for when to write and when to break, but I don’t know how well it’s going to work.

This should be fun.

Looking for Motivation

Ideas have arrived, and yet I have this problem of getting up early in the morning. Again. It's like exercise. I hate starting, but once I get going it's not so bad. The first few days though... I have the hardest time convincing myself it's worth it. Surely I can get that writing done later in the day, it's Summer. I don't have a job right now, no school to speak of... I can do it during the day, or at night or something, right?

Of course not. While my parents will often retire earlier, my brothers don't, in typical teenager fashion. If I stay up I'll never be able to stand not to hang out with them... the only option is to either wall myself away for the months I write (which will drive me crazy) or I can learn to get up early again. Curses!

In other news, things are a bit better. Somehow I stumbled upon a Language Construction Kit (I make it a link so that I feel very fancy). I think it was something about wanting to make an alphabet for Yavn, and wand'ring round the internet for ideas, up comes a link for said kit. Now I'm obsessed with it. I really should learn another language before I try and create my own (say, finishing up my Italian course, or maybe getting my parents to help me learn Swahili or something), but be that as it may, I've already made up most of my grammar. Right now I'm trying to generate some semi-random words to get some vocabulary, so I can move on to translating and writing and speaking it somewhat to find holes in my grammar rules. I've eliminated or combined some tenses, and I'm hoping that doesn't mess me up terribly. I'll never know until I start using it. I found a handy program that will let me define catagories of letters and then put in patterns that I want, and it'll generate random words based on that. It's quite helpful. It could be as vague as just Consonants and Vowels, or as specific as typing the words yourself. I've got fricatives (M, N, V, F, etc.), vowels (vowels), plosives (P, B, D, T, G, etc.) and approximants (like R and L). Using names I've got so far, I'm generating words from their patterns. I can't replicate the entire dictionary in a day, and I've got to assign each word to an English word. The vocabulary of course will have fewer words than English (English has pretty much the most of any language I know of), but even so I'll need hundreds. I've got about 300 printed off on a sheet for easy reference, but I still have to find the best words to assign them to. Some are more important than others, and I'll probably do those first. Right now I'm picking out some for prepositions, and next I'll probably get nice words for the important ideas and objects in Yavn. Wow. Work.

I have another project to work on writing-wise that should help with world-building yet more. If I could just get work done on it... I'm slotted to start today, and I will do it. I didn't get my rear out of bed this morning? Too bad.

Well, no more procrastinating. Music, writing, work.

Ooh, it generated one that goes "umpyiu." How on earth do I pronounce that?

A Summary

It's strange how I never want to sit down at the computer and blog, and yet I'm perfectly happy blogging by sending a text from my phone (like I am now. My new phone has email!).
Writing has been slow lately. I took a break in December and managed with only marginal success to work on Crystal Glare in January. I'm probably still only... Three fifths through, at most. Had I been able to stick to my schedule, I would be done by now. But since NaNo I've not really wanted to get up early. It happens a lot in winter for me.
I'm still working my way through it, I have bad days and better days, but so far none that could be acceptable during November. But maybe I can't set all year by NaNoWriMo, however much I want to. When spring comes things nay get better.
In other news, I finished my Algebra 1 book, and now I can resume Geometry. I still have no idea if I'm behind or not. I probably am. At least I've made a little progress on Italian, if only I could build my vocabulary.
And that's the news!