Once Upon a Time I Had All of These Good Habits...

I wonder where they went. I would get up, write on one of my many stories, or maybe edit one of them, and then I would write a blog post. Now look at me. When I do get up, I don't really write, and I haven't written a post from the computer since I don't even know when. So anyway, -waves- I'm still alive! Hi!

Let me see... Things have been all right I guess, recently one of my family's dogs died. He was really sick with a belly full of fluid and such, so not a great thing. We ended up putting him down on Thursday. The day before we left on a church canoe trip (which was fun by the way).

As far as writing goes, I was doing well for a while, getting up and writing on one of my stories, but I hit a little block at one point when I couldn't remember something, and then I got all thrown off. I'll have to see if I can fix that.

Right now... Since I can't be motivated or bothered to do anything actually productive, I'm loading a bunch of CDs that I pulled from my dad's collection at semi-random. To the computer, and then to the mp3 player! Woo.

I have made a little bit of progress on reworking Crystal Glare. If getting a few more thoughts about it swimming around my head can be called progress. I'm just hoping right now that the sit in my head won't kill them, and maybe it will make them better. Like fine wine. Or even cheap wine, since it probably gets better with a little age on it too.
Lemme see... I finished my beginner Italian course a little while ago, and there should be a spiffy computer one winging it's way towards my Italian partner's house right now... If it hasn't arrived already. It's not Rosetta Stone, but it's got some cool voice recognition, and it seemed to be a good course. As if I really know anything, but I need to work on something, so it might as well be this.

I'm off to try and find my good habits!

On the Way to Texas

I've been sitting in the car for about... Close to 7 hours now actually, with my dad driving on the way down to Texas. It's just three of us this time, instead of the usual four. My poor brother has finals to study for, so he couldn't come. I don't mind sitting in the car for long periods of time actually. I've gotten used to it I guess from 12-hour days of traveling I've done before. My family is also nice to spend time with so that helps.
While I've been not blogging, writer's block has come and gone. Yesterday I hit the low point of me not having any interest in any writing whatsoever. Today my mind apparently decided it was done and let me write 2k again. I think that puts my total so far to about... 13k of 50k? Somewhere around there.
I went back to my original plan for this month: finish up a story that's been waiting far to long. I've left alone my new effort for now, although I think maybe I just need to push it until I get it to do something that's all it's own. We shall see.

I Have Done Nothing Today

And yet I feel so productive. By the general populace's standards though, I haven't really accomplished anything. I got up at about.. 5:15, started writing at about 5:30, got to 2k the fastest I have in a long time (finished about... 7? 6:45? Really fast for me), and made an origami something (a modular something of twelve pieces to be exact), and ate breakfast, all by nine o'clock. And yet I haven't really done anything to earn money or really move my general education forward.

And you know what? I don't really care. Because I have virtually all day to do school and other less important things like school and exercising and such. This morning, I wrote and played with little pieces of paper. And I am satisfied with that.

2,000/50,000

Rather Useless and/or Unusual Skills

Since I haven't written a post in a while, and there's not that much for me to say, I'm going to do one of my "fun" rambles. Topic: Useless Skills.

I recently acquired a new one actually. Now when my alarm goes off I have this magical power to not fall back asleep. It's amazing! And annoying sometimes when I forget to turn it off and then I can't sleep in... And it only took me... what? About 8 months to train myself this way? Next up comes waking up at about 5:30 without an alarm. Or maybe not.

Next month I'm going to do a little personal NaNoWriMo with a friend of mine, since I'm having such a hard time focusing and writing or editing. I was going to work on a story that's been asking to be finished, but silly me decided to write a drabble as an exercise and now it's turning into a whole plot of it's own. Why do I do this to myself?

As for Italian, my friend and I are almost finished with our current book, and I've been browsing online for what we wanted to do next. We wanted something with more grammar, since that's what we struggle with most, but then I also think we need some vocabulary expanding books, and and and... The list could go on. Basically, we don't actually know very much Italian yet. So next up is more studying!

Maybe I had something to update on after all xD

Outside Again!

It's our first nice day in a while here in Kansas, and so I'm trying to spend as much of it outside as I can. It has nothing to do with wanting to avoid cleaning the house. Nothing at all.
I read my last NaNoWriMo effort the other day, and I have good news: my writing has improved since writing Crystal Glare. It's bad news for CG though, since now I've looked at what I can maybe do. At any rate, NaNo 08 doesn't need any shuffling I don't think, and although I forgot to follow up on a small detail I started, the only major rewriting that needs doing is one scene that somehow got lost as I was uploading it from my Neo. At least, I think everything's ok. The first read-through was just such a relief that I might need to read it again. And then there's line-editing. I need practice on that. I do have some drabbles I wrote sometime last year, maybe I could do those for practice. They're each well under 1k. I think I'll warm up on those.

Changing Gears

Only slightly I guess. I got tired of waiting for responses from friends who have no time, and I think I’ve got to rewrite Crystal Glare anyway. I’m just so unhappy with it…

I started reading through my 2008 NaNo (which badly needs a title, don’t let me forget that), and it’s made me realize all the more how bad Crystal Glare is. I guess it’s a good thing that my writing’s improved, but I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me on that monster.

I haven’t finished reading through it yet, but I’ve been thinking that’s it’s not going to take as much work. It won’t need shuffling around as far as I know, since I planned it out way better. I need to check on my characters to make sure they’re realistic, and of course just everything in general, but I might be able to go almost straight to line-editing. That’s my hope anyway.

Crystal Glare… I think it has some potential, but it just needs so much work that I don’t want to think about it right now. I want to write out the plot again and remember what I want it to be, and then I think I’ll just draft it again. For the most part anyway. I’ve got some stuff that ended up popping up later that would be better if I meshed them in with the beginning more, and my characters just are… more cardboard than I think I have the skill to fix just line-editing. Some of the stuff I inserted might be able to be left alone fore the most part though. If I’m lucky and don’t change things too much in the beginning.

All in all, I think I want to warm up on my more recent writing attempts before I try to really tackle that thing.

Or am I just wimping out?

March Summary

Sorry I'm late! I keep thinking of it, but never at a good time, and so I forgot... anyway, on with the routine!

• Grow closer to Christ Like I seem to keep saying, this is just hard for me to judge on, no? I like to think I grow closer day by day, but it's hard to know if that's really true.
  
• Win NaNoWriMo 2009 Still waiting on working on my plot inkling, although I'm about to start working on it just out of boredom.
  
• Edit my 2007 NaNo On a standstill. I really want to rewrite the thing, but I'm still waiting on my second opinions. I need to pester those people into finishing up.
  
• Edit my 2008 NaNo Still waiting, although I'm about to just go ahead and start on this, or my plot. I need to keep moving on something.
  
• Learn Italian to a conversational level Moving along I suppose, though I only got like one lesson done in the month of March. I couldn't get together with my learning partner for most of the month, so it was difficult.
  
• Learn at least one fancy musical piece for flute I still haven't picked out my piece yet, and in fact haven't practiced my flute hardly at all. I need lessons and time slotted for practice.
  
• Learn to drive (driver's ed, permit, restricted, license) I'm going to make a point to study for that test and get my permit this month. Hopefully.
  
• Get to the point on my flute that I'm capable of playing in church See above flute goal. Practice practice practice. I think I'd do way better with formal lessons than as a self-taught flutist.

So, all in all, I need to put more effort into my day. It didn't help that I caught a nasty cold last month, but I'm out of excuses for that by now. So my list includes the driving test, flute practice, editing on something, and hopefully I can keep up/catch up on school doing all of this. I also need to make more effort to putting some real posts on here...

I will feel happy about my Italian though. Despite not getting to review and learn with my friend, I feel like I've advanced in my Italian some. I'm nowhere near fluent, but I think I can make sentences on my own. I just hope I'm not doing it wrong and messing myself up.

Maybe sometime this year I actually will be able to carry out a conversation in Italian...