Qzie and the Writing Process

I am a mature adult.

2012-02-28T00:33:00.000-05:00

So I started reading Divergent by Veronica Roth, and it's really good! I just love it so far, even though I haven't made it that far in.

In the book, the city is divided into five sections: Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Erudite, and Dauntless. The main character starts out in Abnegation, which emphasizes selflessness. And I started thinking, Man. Abnegation people are the type of people who let people cut in front of them while they're waiting for the bathroom until they're having a meltdown.

And that led to this.

(Click for big.)

No regrets.

Something different

2012-02-08T15:30:00.000-05:00

I've been having trouble writing recently, and I'm not really sure why. Stress, probably. SO I figured my routine could use a little shaking up.

In our high school drama and screenwriting class, our teacher started us out writing scenes that were completely silent. Then we built up to one word, then two words, then we could use all the words we felt were necessary. That, in essence, is what I'm going to be trying. Except it'll look a little more like this:

-50 words
-100 words
-500 words
-1000 words
-2000 words
-5000 words
-10,000 words

It'll be a good exercise, especially with the first three.

I've got the 50-word story done and with that... it is only with great embarrassment that I'm telling you I have a Tumblr. I swear I'm not a hipster. I got it and wasn't really sure what I would do with it for a while, but... well, now I do. Plus now I'm finding tons more writer blogs. So. If you're on there, give me a shout. :)

Rage. Rage, rage, rage.

2012-01-24T19:39:00.002-05:00

"SOPA and PIPA Fully Alive - and a New Bill Joins Them"

So let me break this down for you.

Government: Hey, we're gonna pass these bills that will totally violate your first amendment rights and encourage other countries to do the same thing!
Internet: DON'T YOU DARE.
Government: Oh... I guess these might need some revision.
Internet: Come up with that idea on your own, brain trust?
(One day later)
FBI: We're going to shut down Megaupload now.
Internet: NOOOOOOOO.
Tumblr: Good night, sweet prince.
(A week later)
Government: Hey we've barely altered anything in those two bills, and we've got another that will do the same thing!
Internet: >:T

Government: Also ACTA.

"Is Your Book Good, Great, or HOT?"

2012-01-17T12:15:00.000-05:00

(Relevant link that pretty much cracked me up with the title.)

Disclaimer: I am just kidding you guys. Also this is the best possible first post of the year. Also I'm really sorry if this offends you and I promise never to make these kinds of jokes here again.

My book is SO hot!

"How hot is it?"

It's so hot that it comes with its own fire extinguisher.

It's so hot that when it touches one page to another, it sizzles a little.

It's so hot that everybody at the library wants to check it out.

It's SOOO HOT that it runs at 451 degrees Fahrenheit.

(Best for last.)

My book is so hot that when it walks down the street, librarians wolf-whistle and go, "Hot dog, check out the binding on that fine piece of print."

2012-01-17T02:17:00.003-05:00

It's been a while, hasn't it?

Let me tell you about white text

2011-11-12T10:21:00.001-05:00

I cannot tell you how nice it is just to take a big segment that's getting in the way, make it white text, and move it to the end of the document. It's doing wonders for the inner editor. The word count doesn't take a hit, either! Everybody can be happy. :)

Working titles

2011-11-10T06:58:00.000-05:00

Note the time stamp.

How's NaNo going for everybody who's doing it?

/Edit/

Did this really look that much like a poll?

What.jpg

2011-10-18T22:03:00.000-04:00

Actually, the file name really is what.jpg

Eventually...

I will write something of worth on this blog again.

:D

The greatest synopsis I've ever written

2011-10-18T00:03:00.000-04:00

Yes I spammed Facebook with this. And yes I'm reusing characters. Come at me.

This is the best thing I've written since "I'm going to be a space hobo now. A magical space hobo."

Also if you're doing NaNo, I will totally be your buddy (when that's available again)! My corner is over here.

Neat resources for character building

2011-10-06T16:09:00.001-04:00

First we have the Personality Scale Descriptions from Archetype Writing, which is pretty amazing. Basically, it is a big check list of personality traits. You can download it (in .rtf format) here: http://www.mediafire.com/?sco900g3ryx5myn

There is also the Character Motivation sheet, which I've had for so long that I can't remember where it's from. To quote the creator: "...with it you determine the motivations of the character, then you derive
the personality to go along with those motivations. You can have a truly evil bastard who is doing it all for love!
The key to the system is the idea of separating the actual form of the motivation from the “direction”. This allows us to compress over a hundred possibilities into a small space."
And that PDF is right here: http://www.mediafire.com/?mx900c4wv1g7bax

So hopefully you find these useful!

Edit Minion!

2011-09-28T23:32:00.000-04:00

So Dr. Wicked (who created the wonderful Write or Die) has come out with a new writing program, which is pretty brilliant. It helps you weed out adverbs, weak words, passive voice, "said" replacements, endings with prepositions, and misspelled words. It's still in beta, but it's really great! Here's a screenshot:

Full-size version
And I will stand by that "nice" and "very" to the end.

So yeah, you should check it out. :)

If plots were playlists

2011-09-28T05:35:00.000-04:00

Then this is what my NaNo story would sound like so far.
(If I did this right, the whole thing should just play in that little window.)

Awesome thing: How to Steal Like An Artist

2011-09-09T19:18:00.002-04:00

This one is really long, but it's probably some of the best writing advice I've read.

Here's what it covers:

As always, I highly recommend you check it out.

Insomnia. Why.

2011-09-08T09:00:00.001-04:00

Hey, remember that time when I was all insomnia'd up and had Google Earth?

Yeah, it happened again this morning on Facebook when I became drunk* with the power of being able to make status updates that nobody else could see.

*In the figurative sense only, though I can understand if you don't believe me now.
Also, The Glass Toaster is a very real, very emotional song. It changed my entire life and the very way I look at toasters.
I might still be completely exhausted while writing this.

And while these shenanigans are happening, what am I doing in another window? Yep, I am ~~reading AWESOME FANFICTION~~ rewriting a story from ninth grade. Why? Because Story Nostalgia, that's why.

Do you know what I'm talking about? You write this story, then years later, you have this inexplicable urge to go back and read it. And it is so bad but you love it anyways. Not because it has any literary merit... but because nostalgia.

And that is why there will always be print.

/This concludes the most poorly thought-out post on this blog.

Double rainbow all the way...

2011-09-07T21:41:00.000-04:00

...across the sky...

It really is a double rainbow; my cell phone just couldn't handle it. I was just trying to take the pictures, and my phone was like, "DOUBLE RAINBOW, what does it mean? So intense."

OK, I'm done making stupid jokes.

We've had some crazy weather up here! (Read: completely normal.) It was in the upper 80s and 90s for a few days, then yesterday it dropped down into the 60s. Oh Michigan.

Replace book titles with bacon

2011-09-01T00:44:00.000-04:00

^ That's one of the trending topics right now on Twitter. I'm not actually logged in at the moment, so thought I'd share some titles here.

The Bacon Games
Catching Bacon
Baconjay
The Lord of the Bacon
The Fellowship of the Bacon
The Two Bacons
Return of the Bacon
Fight Bacon
Baconormalcy
Bacontastic
The Scarlet Bacon
How the Bacon Stole Christmas
Charlotte's Bacon
Memoirs of a Bacon
Baconborn
Baconbreaker
Baconclimber
Trickster's Bacon
If Bacon Stay[s]
Where Bacon Went
The Lion, The Witch, and the Bacon
Prince Bacon
The Voyage of the Dawn Bacon
The Silver Bacon
The Horse and His Bacon
The Magician's Bacon
The Bacon Battle
Baconlandra
Bridge to Terebaconia
The Bacon Bride

And by "some", I meant "a bunch".

OK, now your turn!

Swoon, Blogger, swoon.

2011-08-31T22:11:00.000-04:00

Seriously, Blogger's new layout is really nice. Much cleaner-looking.

Anyways, today's the last day of Camp NaNo. I'm probably not gonna make it (close to 31K right now, soo...). But I don't feel like this month's been a loss because I got a lot of short stories written. They're just... really short. :) Plus I've been experimenting with style, which is always fun. Swinging in between third person and second person, and present and past tense. Still hate writing in first person.

I think a big part of it was that it didn't really feel like NaNo, so there wasn't really a big rush to write more than usual. So... yeah. Still planning on participating in November, and hopefully winning this time.

Finally, you guys should check this kid out. He has crazy talent.

Hmmm.

2011-08-23T18:48:00.000-04:00

Is it just me, or are there a lot of YA trilogies lately?

...That's all.

Lost five hours today on a reading binge

2011-08-22T17:24:00.000-04:00

Paranormalcy by Kiersten White, you guys. I didn't think it would be that good.

And it was incredible.

I thought it was going to be another typical YA supernatural romance with vampires and drama and angst and blablabla but no. It's actually charming and funny and exciting.

I was not prepared.

No, it's not without its flaws (explaining jokes, some typos, the awkwardly used word/phrase here and there) (pot and kettle, I know) but the pros largely outweigh the cons. And that character arc! Let me just be a fourteen-year-old so I can do this real quick: <3 <3 <3 And there's no love triangle! I mean, there's a psycho ex-boyfriend, but the main makes it very clear she wants nothing to do with him, so... <3 And the main love interest guy has flaws, too! And there are very real stakes! And you actually kind of feel for the main villain! And - and - and -

*Cries* I'm just so happy, you guys. This book is so awesome.

Friday Fragments

2011-08-19T16:56:00.000-04:00

(Geez, when was the last time I did this. I'll try not to spam you guys with videos again.)

1) I'm a bit behind in Camp NaNo, but hoping to catch up this weekend. I've pretty much accepted that this has turned into a collection of short stories instead of something super exciting. Oh well. I'll save the super exciting stuff for the main event.

2) Something amazing happened the other day! I thought I lost the main files for my NaNo '10 story because the computer screen broke and it was all glitchy and terrible, but miracles happened and the files were saved! Don't you love it when that happens? :)

3) I'm feeling a reading binge coming on in September. So many books:
-Memoirs of a Geisha
-Trickster's Choice
-The Light Fantastic
-The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
-And Then There Were None
-The Scoop & Behind The Screen (two stories in one book)

Considering adding Divergent to that list.

4) OK, this one's for The Hunger Games fans. Spoilers ahoy. What did you think of the epilogue in Mockingjay? I thought it worked pretty well. It showed that the world changed, the survivors were trying to move on, and all that jazz. The only part I was kind of unhappy about was that Gale and Katniss were never really friends again, and that was pretty lame.
My friends Kirstin and Courtney weren't really happy with the epilogue in general (but Courtney's never been happy with an epilogue :P). They both thought Katniss sounded really depressed (PTSD anyone?), and there wasn't enough explanation about Panem and their new government and such.
So yeah, what do you think?

Have a good weekend, everybody! :)

It's been a while since I've spammed y'all with pictures and videos, hasn't it?

2011-08-16T14:30:00.001-04:00

Let's fix that. :D

Haha, hipsters are hilarious.

Saw this the other day and got the feeling that in time, I'm going to have to make a similar ridiculous promise.

(Pfft. "Once you jump into a tub of marshmallows, you really have to savor the moment.")

And lastly... guys. Did you realize that the main NaNoWriMo event is less than three months away? (While I try to figure out what the heck even happened to my plot. Where'd it gooooooo...)

Let's talk about cursive

2011-08-15T12:32:00.000-04:00

There was this post over at Daily Writing Tips talking about how people don't really write in cursive or by hand anymore because of computers and tech and all that jazz. (It's like a sillier version of the hard copy v. ebook debates, except hard copies are definitely better than ebooks. :P)

I don't mind writing by hand at all, but I really hate cursive. It's always seemed to be a really ridiculous way to write, not to mention it gets harder and harder to read the more often you use it. It's like print writing's horrible inverse. Plus, thanks to some school-hopping between second and third grade, I had to learn it three times. Kinda loses its charm after the second time.

*Looks at blog banner*

...

Week One in a nutshell

2011-08-07T21:16:00.000-04:00

So I started off the week feeling pretty good about this story. Loved my characters, thought the plot line worked pretty well, all that jazz. The first chapter basically wrote itself, which was nice. Also had a lot of fun writing some future parts with the nightmare sequences. Those are pretty fun, too.

Then somewhere around Thursday, I got to the part where the antagonists were introduced and just wasn't feeling it. So I wrote more nightmare sequences! And then realized how action-light this story really is when I was imagining something really exciting.

And now it's turned into a completely different story (different genre and everything), but with the same characters. It'll be fun. :D

There is no way I will regret redoing the entire story at the end of the month.

Did you see the new Writer's Digest site?

2011-08-02T14:47:00.001-04:00

It's beautiful~. So yeah, link's right over to the side. Unless you're reading this in something like Google Reader, in which case, here ya go.

So Day Two! It's going slowly. Probably cuz I'm still stuck in chapter one and because I just started writing a little while ago. Trying to work through the first few plot-related songs on the playlist. Word count-wise, I'm on track. Somewhere around 1800 right now.

/Cut scene/

Skipped to some depressing future parts. Killed a main character. Twice.

Going for three.

Day One so far

2011-08-01T19:40:00.000-04:00

Started out a little shaky this morning, but I think that was because I was super tired and getting distracted by the internet. I was worried that the story would move pretty slowly, but after a page and a half of putting up with Mitchell and Tasia being themselves, everything's moving really quickly.

It's weird because I thought that Ace would be the main character because... well, he has all the makings. But Mitchell is actually proving to be a pretty good MC, even (especially?) if the point of his character arc is for him to stop being so passive. :D And besides, rolling with third person omniscient over here, so it's not like the other three won't get plenty of attention.

I think this thing finally has a title, too. Going with Soul Shout. Came from this song by Your Heart, specifically this set of lyrics: "If it's heartache that you want
Well we're f-f-fresh out
You can have a kiss from God
That will make your soul shout..."

So yeah! Everything's going pretty well so far. :)

Google Earth is dead useful. / Carissa loses her mind

2011-07-30T06:08:00.001-04:00

And probably dangerous in the wrong hands.

I've been trying to find a good hometown for these kids. It's just in my head that they're from a kind of big town in the mountains. I've got it narrowed down to somewhere in Idaho. But now I feel bad because I feel like I'm creeping on all these towns and I just want to get everything right.

It's late and I should sleep.

/Cut scene/

Wow this town is like the Bible Belt, except with Mormons.

And it's PERFECT.

wait if I use this town then I can make a bunch of Pokemon shout-outs

/Cut scene/

Holy tomato it's perfecter

Ernest Hemingway and his grandkid are buried here, you guys

I found a street called Lane Avenue. ...No further comment.

/One more search/

Hey guys

Guys

I found my neighborhood and

It is ridiculous how many people have ridiculously large swimming pools, like ten people. :( Why aren't we friends, swimming pool people?

Why do I keep typing in italics?

Right. So tired.

Yeah OK I'm going to sleep now.

/LIES/

5t's

wa5t what 5s... s60eth5ng 5s screw5ng w5th the 2eyb6ard. TH5S W6N'T EVEN 0A2E SENSE T606RR6W.

oh. Finally found out what num lock does. BUT GUYS IT'S THE ANDROMEDA GALAXY!

sleep

Getting ready for camp

2011-07-27T17:05:00.001-04:00

Camp NaNoWriMo, that is.

Most of my plotting has been music-based, and by that I mean I've been going through every single song in Windows Media Player to try to establish the general mood of the story, what the characters are like, what they're like with each other, and, y'know, all the plot points. It helps, I think.

I'm not going to share the entire playlist with you guys (28 items/ 108 minutes), but right now I'll show you the first part of songs that establish the story and the characters.

Story's Theme: Best of Me (acoustic) by The Starting Line
Tell me what you thought about when you were gone and so alone
The worst is over and you can have the best of me
We got older, but we're still young
We never grew out of this feeling that we won't give up

Ace Flynn: Everything You Ever Wanted by Hawk Nelson
I tried to be perfect, tried to be honest
Tried to be everything that you ever wanted
Tried to be stronger, tried to be smarter
Tried to be everything but you

Shea Henley: Ordinary Day by Zoegirl
Every minute feels like an hour slowly creeping by
All of this stress but I do my best to take it all in stride
I need to decide, need to unwind
All these things are on my mind
It's an ordinary day...

Tasia Henley: It's On by Superchick
It all comes down to this
You take your best shot, might miss
You take it anyway
You're gonna make your move today

Mitchell Schubert: Procrastinating by Stellar Kart
So here I am, it's 3 AM, I don't know where to begin
Time's running out and there's no doubt that I feel like throwing in
The towel with no way I can get this start finished

Ace and Mitchell: Last Train Home by FM Static
We've fallen apart somewhere back at the start
When we thought that we could fix each other by ourselves
Let's get back to the part when things weren't like they are
And we were laughing on the last train home

Shea and Tasia: Vole by Celine Dion
Vole, vole petite aile (fly, fly little wing)
Ma douce, mon hirondelle (my dear, my dove)
Va t'en loin, va t'en sereine (go far away, go serene)
Qu'ici rien ne te retienne (let nothing here hold you back)

Mitchell and Tasia: Finding Something to Do by hellogoodbye
As long as there's something to see, I'll see it with you
As long as the days can seem, we'll find something to do
If ever your love should leave, just swear you'll follow it through
And I swear I'll always follow you

Shea and Ace: Some Story by Raven Zoe
But your eyes are the saddest that I've ever seen
And whatever you're hiding shines right through the screen
And those other girls might not agree
But some story isn't worth it to me

Tasia and Ace: Hot Air Balloon by Owl City
I'll be out of my mind, and you'll be out of ideas pretty soon
So let's spend an afternoon in a cold hot air balloon
Leave your jacket behind, lean out and touch the treetops over town
I can't wait to kiss the ground wherever we touch back down

Shea and Mitchell: Fine by Lemon Demon
Light is on the way, we'll be having a fun time
It's such a lovely day, we should pocket the sunshine
And never give it back, even if there's a heatwave
We're stalling on the track, it'll just be a close shave

Normally I don't pick out songs for every single relationship, but that's kind of a big focus in this story, so that's what happened.

High school writing. Oh joy.

2011-07-26T18:34:00.002-04:00

So in eleventh grade, my teacher advised us that we should keep everything we've written, whether it's good or bad, because when we look back on it, we'll see how far we've come as writers.

And I did keep everything. Well, a lot of it. The Harry Potter fan fiction is all gone. :P So is a lot of my emo poetry, but that's more because I didn't back it up. (Seriously, sixteen-year-old me, what was wrong with you?)

So the other day I was looking through some old notebooks from high school, and I found this.

"Have at thee, knave," growled the monstrous knight right behind Bobert. Bobert paled at the unbelievable size of his challenger, and then remembered his squirrel army and smirked.
"SQUEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAK!" shouted Bobert, pointing at his foe, which translated as "FOOOOOOOOOOOOD!" The ravenous squirrels let out their battle cry and enveloped the poor, unsuspecting enemy.
Bobert blinked in surprise. "I thought I said "charge". Oh well, that works too."

Self. What was wrong with you. Don't you know how to structure a sentence.

...

Don't you know what question marks are, either?

It's so hot

2011-07-21T21:40:00.003-04:00

Have you seen the heat index for the US lately?

See, I'm in that lower part of Michigan that's in the orange zone. Please keep in mind that this is the current-current heat index, which means how hot it feels at 9:30 at night. Let me just track back a few hours to, say, 4:30.

And suddenly we're in the reds.

Why am I posting this?

To remember how miserable summer can be when January hits. (Haha, most of you readers do not know how crabby I can be when it's cold out. And I've lived in Michigan my whole life.)

--

After-post edit: Did not realize those pictures would actually change. This is basically like knowing the weather all the time. Plus what it was four hours ago.

The people who just don't get it.

2011-07-19T14:58:00.000-04:00

Can I quote myself for a second? I don't mean to sound pretentious, but it'll inform this post.

I know what I want to do with my life. I think people think I'm joking when I say, "I'm gonna work dead-end jobs and write novels my whole life," but I'm being perfectly serious. I could not care less what my day job is; I just want to write.

So after graduating, people expect me to do something with my degree. I am. I'm trying to finish a story and get it published. That's the primary directive here. But they don't ask anything about that. They specifically ask, "What kind of jobs are you applying for?"

Honest answer: The kind that are hiring and that don't take up extra hours so I can write.

And I swear, almost every time, they look at me like, Ohhh. You still haven't grown out of that. Uh, nope. Not about to "grow out of" the one thing I'm sure I'm supposed to do.

A day job is just there to be convenient and get me out of this house. And that's all there is to say on the matter.

Awesome thing of the day: "The Difference Between A Writer And Someone Who Writes"

2011-07-12T13:49:00.000-04:00

This is a really long essay, so I'll just copy and paste the first couple paragraphs, then I strongly suggest you follow the link at the end to read the rest. :)

A writer is not just someone who writes. In her head, it’s words all day. She sees the world not as a place made up of things but of words about those things. She knows more meaning is contained in a phrase like “poison friends” than a paragraph-long attempt at comparing emotional pain to a stab wound. A writer will divine a metaphor from a pattern on a dress, or a gesture, because sunsets have been done before. A writer understands the capacity for words to embolden, to eviscerate, to cut a man in half. A writer’s words have texture and an aesthetic – they mean one thing on paper and another in your mouth. A writer knows the word “perfume” has a scent, and “savory,” a flavor. She also knows that the technical term for making you taste her words is synesthesia, but she’d rather show you than tell you.

A writer’s mind is sticky, cavernous. It is a locus of constant invention and generation, but also of deconstruction and warfare. Its very synapses fire bullets between semicolons and periods. In the infancy of the day, or as it’s expelling its final breath, an errant phrase will show up there unannounced and become lodged in some furrow. It will keep the writer up at night, until she’s built a temple, or at the very least, a sand castle, around it.

Continue-->

I'm still alive!

2011-07-10T16:38:00.000-04:00

I'm kind of afraid to check the last time I actually posted here. But here's the long and short of it.

First it was the last few weeks of school, and that was crazy between writing the last couple episodes of Spacecano and getting ready for graduation.

This happened before the semester was actually over. Ha.

Then eleven of us went on a missions trip to Christ's Outreach for the Blind.

It's pretty scenic down South.

And I had a camera.

SO YEAH.

That's where I was.

And now I'm planning to do Camp NaNoWriMo next month. Anybody else doing it now or doing it next month as well?

Heartbeats and Heroes

2011-06-24T22:24:00.000-04:00

(Sorry to do this two times in a row. Scraps coming tomorrow or Sunday.)

Mitchell Schubert isn't exactly a shining picture of health. Ever since he was a kid, he's had what he calls "random heartbeat attacks". The adults call it AVNRT because it's very grown-up to use a weird acronym.

Kids used to call him a beanpole in school, because that's what he looked like. Well, a redheaded beanpole. Add to the fact that he wears glasses and a medical alert bracelet, and you have yourself a recipe for bullying.

Jack doesn't really care how much Mitchell yelled about his random heartbeat attacks. Mitchell's a tiny thing, and tiny things are fun to push around and knock about behind the school. Also, he is pretty sure that Mitchell made the whole thing up to get out of gym.

Mitchell figures that Ace must be his guardian angel when he shows up.

"Hey, jerkoff!" Ace adjusts his baseball cap. Tufts of dirty blonde hair stick out from under the brim. "Leave him alone!"

Jack smirks and pushes Mitchell away. Mitchell seizes the opportunity to whip out his medicine, taking it quickly to stop the palpitations.

Jack steps towards Ace. "Or what?"

Ace clenches his fists together. "I'ma make you pay."

Jack raises an eyebrow and pushes Mitchell to the ground. Ace runs at him, right hand in the air and ready to make contact, but he freezes when Jack grabs his wrist. "Stupid move."

Ace doesn't miss a beat. He drives his left fist into Jack's nose, bloodying it. Jack staggers back, and Ace smirks. "I'm ambidextrous, nimrod."

Jack wipes some of the blood from his nose and stares at it. He doesn't seem to know how to react, so he only gives the other two an uncertain look before threatening, "I'm gonna get you guys!" and trying to swagger off. The swagger is off.

Ace snorts. Then he notices that Mitchell is sprawled out on the ground, red-faced and sweaty. "You OK?" he asks. "You don't look so good."

Mitchell guesses he doesn't. "I'm fine… j-just chillin'…" he says, hoping the other boy would just drop the topic. He bites his lip. "Why'd you do that?"

Ace falls quiet as he sits down next to Mitchell, putting a fair amount of space between them. "People who… who hit other people should know what it's like. They should have a taste of their own medicine." He tugs at the bottom of his long shirtsleeves.

Mitchell looks at him, feeling like he was missing something. "Oh. 'Kay." He holds out one of his hands. "My name's Mitchell."

Ace grins. "Ace." He takes Mitchell's hand. "You stick with me, kid. We're gonna be just fine."

–

Mitchell hasn't seen his best friend's eyes since they were fourteen years old. Ace has been doing a good job the past three and a half years hiding them behind a huge pair of aviators. He doesn't even take them off in class, which Mitchell thinks is ridiculous. On the other hand, it's impressive that the teachers let him get away with it.

And it wasn't like he hadn't tried to find out why Ace had kept the shades on for so long. The guy has an annoying talent for changing the topic every time Mitchell brings it up. So Mitchell is a little surprised when Ace brings it up himself.

"You know how I've been wearing these awesome aviators for like… forever?" Ace leans against Mitchell's piano, fiddling with the keys but not playing any distinct melody.

Mitchell raises an eyebrow. "Um, yeah."

"And you know how I'm like, always here or at work or somewhere? And how I never let you in my house for long?" The piano keys plunk in discord.

"Get to the point, man."

Plunk. Plunk-plunk. "Phht. 'K, don't freak out on me, bro." Ace takes hold of the glasses, and he slowly pulls them off. A long, thick scar traces the bottom of his left eye. It's the most noticeable thing in the world. "Yeah. It's bad, I know."

Mitchell can't help but stare. "Um… what? What happened? I don't…"

Ace just stares at him. "Think about it, Mitchell. Do I really need to spell this out for you?"

Mitchell grapples with what this could mean. Then it hits him like so many refrigerators full of horror, if that was a thing. "Oh my God. Ace. You… you mean… your parents?" He touches his own left eye.

"My dad." Ace plunks at the keys some more. "So yeah." He swallows. "That's kinda what the thing with the maps is about."

What? Wait. What. "Oh you moron. You complete dumb – ffffh." Mitchell can feel his heartbeat beginning to quicken, but it's no cause for alarm yet. "You are not running away. That's the stupidest thing you've ever thought of! And for that matter, why didn't you ever tell anyone that this – " he makes some wild motion around his eye – "was happening? You coulda gotten out of there! Why the hell would you stay? Obviously you don't give a crap about your family, so what's there to lose?"

Ace stares at him with angry grey eyes, but he is so calm. "Mitchell, calm down. You're stressing yourself out." He puts a hand on Mitchell's shoulder and forces him to sit down.

Mitchell glares at him. "I can't believe you're just going to up and disappear. This your idea of a goodbye, you jerk?"

"Dude, would you just calm down so you don't have heart failure or something?" Ace says this more snappishly than intended. "…Sorry."

Mitchell sighs and nods. "I'm calm. My heart is AO-flippin'-K." He closes his eyes tightly. "No heart failure up in here."

"Good." Ace sits down next to him. "Cuz you should come with me. Y'know. To Washington and be basically Canadian." He smiles a little when Mitchell opens one eye to see if he's serious. "I'm so serious, dude."

"Oh." Mitchell opens both eyes and stares ahead. "So we're like… road-tripping it up now like some Fellowship of the Specs, right?" He smiles and holds out his fist.

Ace pounds it. "For sure."

This is what I've been doing.*

2011-06-22T20:10:00.000-04:00

*Well, sorta. Wrote this ages ago. Just continuing it now.

Psychology, Cartography

Ace is eighteen and still hasn’t completely grown into his own body. He’s made up for it by growing well into his mind and everybody else’s. Just because he sells fruit doesn’t make him any less of a psychologist. And just to make sure nobody else can get into his head, he keeps on a pair of aviators.

That’s his superhero name, by the way. Aviators.

He volunteers for more shifts than anybody else, and if they won’t give him any extra shifts, he’ll hang around the place anyway. It’s not like he has the best job in the world. He just works the register. It’s like being stuck on repeat.

He is so tired of being stuck on repeat.

Shea works with him on almost every shift. She cannot fathom why he is almost always there. “Are you seriously here? Again? Dontcha have a life, you loser?” Shea actually believes that honesty is the best policy. Funny how quiet she gets if anyone asks her about that eye patch, though.

Yeah, maybe there are other places that Ace could be. But being closer to work means getting more shifts, which means getting a little farther and further away from his house. And shoot, anything that gets him away from there is all right in Ace’s book.

“Don’t you ever go home, bro? It’s like you’re either here or at school or at my house. All the time.” Mitchell thinks he’s so hilarious. He has no idea how dead-on that statement is. Ace doesn’t think he’s actually seen his biological family in two solid days.

Good.

“You caught me, dude. I am totally trying to find a way to secretly move into your house without you realizing it.” Mitchell laughs. He has no idea Ace wasn’t kidding.

When he was younger, he used to fantasize about taking off in the dead of night. No warnings, no notes, no nothing – a clean break. Except if he did, then who’d end up saving Mitchell from getting shoved into lockers?

Mitchell has no idea what it’s really like at home. Ace is too proud to admit that he needs a hero, too. So he settles for finding excuses to not go back. He gets weird looks and awkward questions about it on a regular basis, but that’s fine.

Everybody will be asking a different set of questions soon enough.

Before he was twelve and needed to save his best friend’s skinny behind at every turn, he collected maps and taped them up in his room like wallpaper. Every night, he would trace the paths from his house to any number of anywhere-elses.

Canada sounds nice, but he doesn’t have a passport. He guesses Washington will do. Washington is basically Canada.

“You should be in cartography,” Mitchell says when he first sees all the maps. Then he realizes he rhymed and laughs.

Ace shrugs. “Whatcha think of Washington, bro?” He’s casual. There’s no ulterior motive behind this question, not at all.

“Dunno.” Mitchell sniffs. “It’s Washington.”

“It’s basically Canada.”

Mitchell chuckles and nods.

“You ever wanna be basically Canadian?”

“Huh?”

Then Ace realizes that his dad’s going to be home and smoothly suggests they relocate – so smoothly that it’s completely awkward. Mitchell notices, of course. He’s only ever been to Ace’s house a couple times in the seven years they’ve known each other, and both times have been brief.

When they relocate to Mitchell’s house, Ace figures it’s time to be straight with him. He pulls off the aviators. Mitchell is shocked, of course. He always thought the glasses had been worn for dramatic effect. Not to hide… that.

Yeah. It’s bad, Ace knows. “That’s kinda what the thing with the maps is about.”

It takes Mitchell a second to figure it out. Then he’s worried and angry and depressed all at one time. Ace has never heard his best friend yell like that. It’s kind of impressive, but it makes sense. Mitchell is a redhead.

When he quiets down, Ace tells him his idea. They’re eighteen, they’re out of school in two days, and they have mobility.

Mitchell’s pretty bright. And he’s pretty up for adventure. Ace guesses that’s why they’re best friends.

So two days later when Shea and Ace close down shop, Ace tries to be extra nice to her. He’s sorry about that eye patch, by the way. Shea is suspicious, but doesn’t question the change in attitude.

“See ya tomorrow, Ace.” She leaves him behind.

Ace smiles to himself. “No you won’t.”

Sunday Scraps

2011-06-12T16:28:00.000-04:00

What do you mean this is late? It's just not on time.

This is pretty video-heavy, even for me.

1) I kind of want to read this.

2) So Friday night, my friend Kirstin gathered us to her house to watch this masterpiece:

It was so bad, it was good. Innuendo like you wouldn't expect from the 1950s. Plus it's just... yeeeeah. Half the characters have seizures at some point in the movie. XD What you have to do is get a group together and make the ever-loving fun out of it.

3) Just kinda stumbled across this website/animation called Ana Somnia. It's really interesting because every time you replay it, there's a different animation, but it's really freaky and trippy.

Hope everyone's enjoying their weekend!

Something about school.

2011-06-09T17:25:00.000-04:00

...Wait, hold on a minute, you can put a location on these posts now?

*Fiddles with it*

Haha, yes. I am now located in Atlantis. I am now done being a child.

Anyway.

I somehow created the PERFECT STORM OF PROJECTS. Seriously. Episode 3 for Spacecano! is going to show next Thursday, so we're working on that right now. In Group Problem Solving, we have a group presentation also due next Thursday, and it has to be at least 40 minutes long. And in Piano, we have our midterm on Monday. So everybody's kind of practicing for that.

"The Perfect Storm, a small region in the Swan Nebula, 5500 light years" and that's where Google Images stopped being informative.

At least I got to coin the term "snowquake" in the process.

So yeah, it's pretty chaotic, but it's fun, too. It's nice to have all these things to do, y'know?

Some things I've been working on.

2011-06-07T14:45:00.000-04:00

1) Patches and Pals (WT)

Tasia Henley is seven years old, has a brown eye and a hazel eye, but doesn’t have cancer. The doctors were worried about that because of the whole iris thing, especially when she started complaining that it was really hard to see. Turned out that she just needed glasses.

Actually, it’s her twin Shea who has cancer. Yes, that’s why she’s cross-eyed and has red eyes a lot. That’s also why her eye hurts so much so often. Everything makes a horrible kind of sense now. But Shea is really brave and strong, so Tasia keeps telling everybody that it’s going to be just fine. So stop worrying, ‘kay?

They’re going to do something called an enucleation, which is a fancy word that means when Shea wakes up, she’s only going to have one eye. But that’s OK because it means she gets a cool eye patch, so she might as well be a pirate. And pirates are just so cool, right? Right.

“When you get your pirate ship, I can be first mate, right?” Tasia and Shea’s drawings of their pirate adventures litter the hospital bed.

Shea gives Tasia a pointed look. “Duh. You’re my sister. It’s the rules.” She grabs a red crayon and scribbles in the ship.

2) To Carmen, from Waldo

Where in the world could you be?
Oh I wish there was some way you could see
That you don't need to steal the world
When adventure's all you need
So take my hand and disappear with me*

*Yes, this is about Where's Waldo and Carmen Sandiego. They would be an amazing couple. Search your heart. You know it to be true.

3) Blue Court Revolution (WT)

There was something sort of light and blue flickering in the darkness when he returned. "That was kind of rude, Evan. I was trying to tell you something, and you just ran off." The blue, light thing shifted a little.

Evan squinted. "Oh geez, is that you again?" He half expected her to tell him that the universe was in danger, and he was the only one who could save it. "Why are you blue? I thought we were twins."

"You can see me now? Awesome." The Cora-shape shifted in a way that suggested a sort of strange dance. "And I'm not blue. I'm just wearing Blue Court regalia, but you wouldn't remember that."

Friday Fragments

2011-06-03T19:15:00.000-04:00

Man, it feels like it's been forever since I've done this.

1) So last night was the NPP's first show, and it went great. We had a full house, and everybody seemed to really enjoy it. Only downside was that because of stupid university rules, we couldn't film it. So lame.

2) This is too excellent.

Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant!- Case of the Two Watsons from Squadron B on Vimeo.

3) Did you even realize that the Deathly Hallows movie is less than a month away? I know. Sneaking up like a ninja. A magic ninja.

4) I'm really loving this 750 Words site. As an experiment, I wrote all my 750 words before, then copy and pasted it into the browser. This is what it said about the time:

Writing started at 19:12pm and stopped immediately, bam.

So funny.

Anyways, that's all I really have to say this week. Have a good weekend, everybody! :)

Killing Your Darlings

2011-06-03T00:28:00.000-04:00

Guess I'm bringing this up because there is a small faction of people in class who want to kill off the president. Well, the character, I mean. (As a side note, it's ridiculous what we can get away with saying just because we're writers. Such as, "Let's kill the president!")

I've got this reputation for killing at least one character per story, and I'm not sure where it came from, because that's really not accurate. I mean, I get really attached to my characters! Even the villains, bless their evil hearts. If I'm gonna kill them off, it's gotta mean something.

And then we have stories where it seems like everyone is dying left and right. I'm sure we can all think of a couple examples. *Cough*Deathly Hallows*Cough*Hunger Games*Cough* And it's like, never-ending sorrow. And it can be really, really difficult to see the point in some of these deaths. Not saying that it can't be used effectively, but there's just that little part of you that got really attached and... yeah. You know.

So how do you handle character deaths?

Did not mean to disappear./ 750words.com

2011-05-30T17:07:00.000-04:00

Oh my gosh, you guys. Blogspot/Blogger just hated me this past week. Every time I tried to go to Blogspot, I got this:

So annoying. But then I tried blogger.com instead today, and that decided to work. Tech is so weird.

Anyways.

Happy Memorial Day to those who are celebrating it. :) For everybody else, Happy Monday! ...Yeah, sorry about that.

I actually wanted to tell you guys about this really awesome website called 750words.com. It's kind of like Write or Die, but more reward-centered instead of punishment-centered. It encourages you to write at least 750 words every day, and you can get these neat badges. It also analyzes what you write to show a bunch of things. Here's a link to one of my analyses.

So yeah, you should definitely check it out! It's really cool.

Friday Fragments - Story Recs Edition

2011-05-20T23:46:00.000-04:00

A few book/series/whatever that are pretty excellent and, if you are so inclined, you would do well to check out.

1) Airborne (The Matt Cruse Trilogy) by Kenneth Oppel
Book One: Airborne
Book Two: Skybreaker
Book Three: Starclimber
I read the first two books in high school, and they were the first steampunk books I'd ever come across. This world is just captivating and has this magical quality, even though it's technically sci-fi, and the characters are so much fun. So yeah, there's this spirit of adventure, but it also manages to cover some pretty interesting issues that steampunk is known for.

2) Other Electricities by Ander Monson
This is a collection of short stories that kind of tell one big story. It's really interesting. It's about this town in Michigan that's responding to a girl's death. The voice is kind of odd and the prose is more poetic than in most stories. There are no real "main characters", exactly. It's a strange story, but a good strange.
And yeah, I had to read it for class last fall.

3) Geektastic by an assortment of writers
This book is amazing and pretty much a must-read if you're a nerd or a geek in any way, shape, or form. Sara Zarr's "This is My Audition Monologue" pretty much makes the whole book. It has all the geeky fun things like conventions and RPGs and such, but there are some pretty deep themes explored, too.

And, if you're into fanfic like my friend Kirstin and me:

The Very Secret Diary. (Harry Potter/ Chamber of Secrets)
Dear. God. This story is terrifying in the best possible way. It starts off slow, but of course it gets exciting right around the October 31 entry (and you probably know why). My friend and I both read it in one night.
But just a warning, it gets really dark and disturbing. This is basically CoS from Ginny's perspective.

"Don't be afraid to be deep."

2011-05-17T15:27:00.000-04:00

(Despite the title, this is not a serious post.)

So I told you guys about how in the New Play Project, we're writing about a group of super sexy scientists that have to stop a spacecano from destroying earth. Professor Feffer has been telling us that we shouldn't be afraid to be deep and really explore the characters.

Cue him walking in on the Episode Three team (the team I'm on) discussing character histories, personality flaws, and vulnerabilities.

"You know what I said earlier about not being afraid to be deep?"

"Yeah?"

"Not for this group. Don't be afraid to be shallow!"

He's started implying that we're the special group because while all the other teams have stuff written, it took us 2 1/2 hours to even start writing. We were too busy discussing character arcs and motivations and... and chips.

We might be the special group, guys.

Friday Fragments

2011-05-13T19:20:00.000-04:00

Well I was going to post yesterday, but Blogspot seemed to be having... issues. (I think I'm going to have to temporarily change the update schedule, by the way, just to accommodate classes.)

1) The New Play Project is excellent. On Tuesday and Thursday morning, we focused on ideas and decided on a show, which we've all seemed to nickname Spacecano. It's about a meteor that's also a volcano that is going to crash into earth in six days, and this team of "super sexy scientists" is trying to find a way to stop it. Meanwhile, there's a volcano cult and all this other stuff happening.
Yeah, this show is going to be kind of amazing.

2) It was so hot this week! It got into the 90s or near the 90s on a couple days at least. It was pretty nice. Guess it's supposed to cool down again, though.

3) I heard someone mention that they're turning The Perks of Being a Wallflower into a movie. This is one book I've wanted to read for a while, but everybody seems so divided on it that I'm a little apprehensive. If any of you have read it, what did you think?
Also, I have no idea if the movie thing is actually true. *Googles* Nevermind. It is true and it is supposed to release next year.

4) Is it super obvious that I am burning out from everything in the world? :)

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Awesome thing of the day: "Born like an artist..."

2011-05-10T15:13:00.001-04:00

This incredibly moving piece comes from here.

Edit: Hmm. Apparently the picture doesn't work anymore. Just follow the link. I promise you, it's amazing.

Everybody knows how I feel about videos by now.

2011-05-09T17:40:00.000-04:00

And how I love making them, too.

Proper post later. Like, tomorrow. :)

Friday Fragments

2011-05-06T13:20:00.000-04:00

Haha, just kind of disappeared again this week. Sorry about that. I have no real excuse except I was either out doing stuff or reading stuff or writing stuff. So yeah.

1) Here's an awesome thing of the day from Letters of Note about libraries. You can get the full context at their blog, but here are a couple of the letters:

I love that Dr. Seuss' letter is written in crayon. There are also letters from EB White and Hardie Gramatky which are really interesting.

2) So it's Mother's Day on Sunday. Most people get their mothers some kind of plant life... but not for my mother. You see, she kills every plant she touches. I wrote a poem about it last year. She wasn't amused.

3) Wednesday night at youth group, there was a conspiracy to saran-wrap my friend Joe's car. It was amazing.

4) School starts again on Monday. This semester I'm taking:
Communication Inquiry (which I recently learned is basically how to do research)
Piano Class I
New Play Project (which will be super awesome)
Group Problem Solving
None of the classes sound particularly difficult (except maybe piano class...), though NPP will probably present its own challenges. Still, I'm looking forward to it.

Have a good weekend, everybody! And if you're a mom, happy Mother's Day!

Top Ten Tearjerkers

2011-05-02T17:05:00.000-04:00

...In any given media. Not in any particular order. Why? Because.

Spoilers ahead, of course.

1) (To give a little context- the little boy with the gas mask had died, but he'd been brought back wrong so that the mask was part of his face. Also, this takes place during WWII.)

"Everybody lives, Rose. Just this once, everybody lives!"

2) Married Life - Up
(To be fair, certain moments of nearly every Pixar movie does this, but this is particularly notable because it happened within the first twenty minutes of the movie.)

3) A Series of Unfortunate Events... *sigh* there are just so many, especially in the last few books. The part that really got me was this... (MAJOR spoilers ahead!)

"'The night has a thousand eyes,'" Kit said hoarsely, and lifted her head to face the villain. The Baudelaires could tell by her voice that she was reciting the words of someone else. "'And the day but one; yet the light of the bright world dies with the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one; yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.'"
Count Olaf gave Kit a faint smile. "You're not the only one who can recite the words of our associates," he said, and then gazed out at the sea. The afternoon was nearly over, and soon the island would be covered in darkness. "'Man hands on misery to man,'" the villain said. "'It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can--'" Here he coughed, a ghastly sound, and his hands clutched his chest. "'And don't have any kids yourself,'" he finished, and uttered a short, sharp laugh. Then the villain's story came to an end. Olaf lay back on the sand, far from the treachery of the world, and the children stood on the beach and stared into his face. His eyes shone brightly, and his mouth opened as if he wanted to tell them something, but the Baudelaire orphans never heard Count Olaf say another word.

4) Of Mice and Men - at the very beginning, you have the guys like us speech.
"But not like us. Because-"
"Because I got you an'-"
"An' I got you."
(And, of course, the ending...)

5) Harry Potter, where to start. Let's just say Harry's entire existence until the epilogue and call it a day. Especially when he starts thinking that everybody's abandoned him (that is, at the start of almost every book.)
Also, this.
"After all this time?"
"Always."

6) A Very Potter Musical: (and don't get me started on the sequel)
Quirrell: "You came back?"
Voldemort: "I came home."

7) The Hunger Games
Fhhhh. This is harder than I thought it would be. Why are top ten lists so difficult. Remind me that I shouldn't do this again. I guess I'll go with the heartwarming one since this list is mostly comprised of depressing ones at the moment.
"You love me. Real or not real?"

8) Lord of the Rings (the book)
"I am glad that you are here with me, Sam. Here, at the end of all things."

9) MPSA- Homestuck (had to get a webcomic in there)
Heartwarming: [S] John: Reunite with your loving wife and daughter.
Depressing: The most recent one since there are just... so... many.

TG: im not a hero
TG: my bro was
TG: john is
TG: im not

And finally, a web original poem that's heartwarming and depressing at once.
10) "the bluest eyes you'll ever see, and hair so brown with power. when she left, i talked with her, and called her my sunflower."

OK! Now for something cheery!

I still have no idea why I was compelled to make this list. This was a terrible idea.

Sunday Scraps

2011-05-01T16:18:00.000-04:00

...Because I was really busy on Friday and Saturday. Heh, sorry.

1) School-wise... exams went fine. Don't really care how I did, just happy the semester is over. :)

2) This book trailer for Skary Childrin and the Carousel of Sorrow is pretty brilliant. It reminds me a lot of A Series of Unfortunate Events because there is such... joy in its complete and utter misery (just watch the video, it'll make sense). Also, I'm really excited for this book because I've been watching Katy Towell's flash movies for six years. SO YEAH.
(The video won't embed, so you actually have to follow the link. And yeah, you should definitely watch her short films. They're marvelously dark.)

3) You know you might be a little sleep-deprived when...
...you're writing in a notebook, and when you hit a bump in the story, you start hitting the notebook against the table and yell "Move, story, moooove!"...
...you refer to your handwriting as font...
...and you forget that you can kind of draw cows.
It is a little embarrassing that all three of these things happened within an hour.

It's exam week.

2011-04-25T15:29:00.000-04:00

And I've created the near-perfect storm of exams.

Tomorrow I have a real exam for COM 2000, then I have to turn in a take-home exam for Environmental Tech Whatever (so that's what I'll be working on today). Thursday I have three exams. Three. In one day. Grand total of five exams. I haven't had to take this many since high school.

So yeah, this is me disappearing until Friday. Sorry!

Friday Fragments

2011-04-22T16:29:00.000-04:00

1) It was the last week of classes this week, which means there are only 67 days until my last day of school. Ever. (Nope, no plans to go to graduate school.) The *grin* emoticon doesn't do this justice, so... ^________^

2) I've been working on this new story called "Evan's Almost Dead Again" (for now). Not completely obsessively because school keeps getting in the way, but it's been fun.

3) Just curious. Anybody here into fandom? Cuz I just discovered this, frankly, really entertaining Livejournal called Fandom Secrets, which is kinda like PostSecret except with... fandom.

4) And because a post just isn't complete without some sort of visual...

5) Happy Easter! Hope you all have an excellent Sunday doing whatever you do. I think my dad's side of the family is getting together Sunday evening for dinner. Plus we have church earlier in the day. We're not very exciting people. :P (Though church activities can be exciting. Like that time with the grill exploding into fire and almost melting my friend's face off. No exaggeration.)

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Character Q&A

2011-04-20T13:43:00.000-04:00

You know those questionnaires about your characters that kinda float around the internet, and they're supposed to be really fun and give you insight about your character?

Yeah. I've always found them kind of irritating. I don't know if any of you feel that way. But I picked up a very similar exercise from Script Frenzy a couple years ago that helps just as much.

1) Take a Facebook survey. Any Facebook survey.

2) Answer the questions as your main characters.

3) Happiness ensues.

For example:

102) Your best friend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do?
Tal: *Hand shoots up in the air* You JUMP THEM. Until the writer says, "Nooo, Tal, your boy is a WEIRD boy, a very weird boy who would have a heart attack if you did that." So then you just tease and flirt and hope he gets the hint, but then he's too big of a chicken to admit that he loves you-
Sim: Um.
Tal: -so you keep trying and trying, even though you start doubting yourself, and then when he's taken away-
Sim: *Full on frontal attack*
Tal: ...Oh yeah. That's what you do.

Emerald and Pyro: *Exchange look*
Emerald: I thought you used it to make a plan to take over the middle school.
Pyro: Thanks for that... using me for your own selfish gain...
Emerald: It was Hydro!
Hydro: And thank you for your feminine wiles. *Smirk* And you too, Emerald!

:D It's a lot of fun.

I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry.

2011-04-18T23:00:00.000-04:00

Very short post today. Er, tonight. I was going to tell you about this website, but... I got a little sidetracked...

I think you'd better see it for yourself and just experience the phenomenon.

I'm sorry.

Friday Fragments - We're All Winners Edition

2011-04-15T15:29:00.000-04:00

I got the website wrong yesterday. It's not random.com, it's random.org. WELL. After doing magical things, we have a winner for the book giveaway. First, thanks to everybody who entered. It was a lot of fun reading your comments (although I'm way too scared of that post to reply to them all individually, sorry).

Without further ado.

Can I get a drum-roll?

Thank you. And the winner is... Sarah Reads Too Much! I'll be sending you an email by the end of the day, but if I don't hear back by Monday, I'm just going to assume you don't want the book anymore and choose another winner.

In other news. Allow me to fill the rest of this post with awesome YouTube videos and delay the very special episode until tomorrow.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Autism Awareness Giveaway

2011-04-14T10:00:00.000-04:00

Just a quick reminder in doodle form. Cuz you all know how I'm pretty much smitten with doodles.

Oh yes.

Oh my WOW, people.

2011-04-13T14:47:00.001-04:00

I am now intimidated by the number of comments on Monday's post. It's kind of amazing how many kind of obscure lines got thrown out there.

Just to clarify. The post/contest will be closed to comments at 11:59 EST tomorrow night AKA 4/14. Or whenever Doctor Who finishes on PBS/WGVU. (Oh yes.)

Friday's going to be a Very Special ~~Episode~~ Post. So today, you get whatever the heck this is (just for reference, this was written in a cootie catcher). Because sometimes it's fun to do things a little differently.

Strangers
"Hey, 3:15 Guy."
"...What?"
"That's what I call you in my head. 3:15 Guy. Cuz you always come here at 3:15."
"Oh." Beat. "My name's Rory."
"Mine's Kaleigh."
"Can I have a root beer float?"
"Oh. Yeah!"

Friends
[Insert picture of Rory and Kaleigh here. Actually, you know what?]

Good enough.

Maybe.
That's a good word for this.

Not Enough
"So... you haven't been around lately."
"Yeah, just don't have much time."
Beat.
"...Usual?" Read: Missed you.
"Yep." Read: You too.

Beginnings
"I need to ask you something."
"Yeah?"
"Do you like..."
"..."
"...Root beer floats?" This is code for someone.
"Do you?"
"...Well, isn't it obvious?"

--

Yeah, it's kind of open-ended, but it was fun trying to fit in a story on a cootie catcher.

So challenge! If you would like to. Try to write a story in a format other than the typical "Someone said, 'Dialogue,' and then there was prose." fashion. If you do it, just tell me, and I will give you a doodly-type avatar thing.

Autism Awareness Book Giveaway- Closed!

2011-04-11T17:32:00.002-04:00

This is my sister Laura.

Stetsons are cool.

This is my sister Laura being hilarious.

My family found out Laura had autism when she was about two years old. She's doing pretty well now, well enough that we think she'll be able to move into a group home eventually. But she's the reason I'm participating in this.

So the book in question is a Book of Legend.

Oh yes.

Oh.

Snap.

Yes.

Bask in its glory, kids.

Bask in its glory.

In all seriousness, though. If you want this book, then all you have to do is reply to this post (as in the one I'm writing/you're reading at the moment) with answers to the following:

1) Are you doing anything for Autism Awareness Month?

2) Are you following this blog?

3) How many lines from The Princess Bride can you think of by yourself? As in: no internet involved. No friends. No family. Just you, soldier.

OK. Go!

EDIT: OH MY GOSH I was in such a rush to get this posted because of this project thing that I totally forgot about autism information. I fail forever. But here it is now.

Autism affects 1 of out 110 children now (it was 1 in 125 two years ago, FYI), and there are four times more boys with autism than girls. It's a spectrum disorder, which basically means that it ranges in severity (you have low-functioning, high-functioning, then everybody in between). There's no cure and nobody is sure what causes it - by the way! If you hear anybody tell you that they've found the thing that causes autism, it's probably not true. Because in all likelihood, it's a combination of biological and environmental factors.

You can find more information here.

Autism Society
Autism Speaks
Autism Research Institute

You can also find the other blogs involved in this week's giveaway here. Thanks everyone who's commented already and so sorry for the info delay!

Friday Fragments

2011-04-08T17:26:00.000-04:00

OK. So it's already the 8th. Weird.

1) So last Friday night, I started feeling a little weird. By Sunday, I was totally bed-ridden and felt like I was dying, which explains Monday's post. This lasted well into Wednesday. So yeah.

2) Finally got my hands on If I Stay! It was alright. Not a bad read.

3) The fountains at school are running again, which means spring is officially back. And to prove it, it's supposed to get into the upper 70s (like between 75-78) on Sunday or Monday. :D

4) On the eleventh, the Autism Awareness Book Giveaway is starting. Be excited.

Have a good weekend!

Battling a plague demon.*

2011-04-04T11:54:00.000-04:00

*By which I mean I'm horrifically sick and in no state to write a blog thing.

Here's this instead.

Have a good day, everybody.

It's April 1. You know what that means.

2011-04-01T11:18:00.074-04:00

It means it's Friday! So here are this week's fragments.

1) It's Autism Awareness Month! (Note the change in banner.)

And there's a book giveaway hop over at the I Am A Reader, Not A Writer blog.

Naturally, I am all over this. Erin at Quitting My Day Job is participating as well. You'll be able to see a full list of all the participating bloggers at the previous link. What book am I giving away? Not sure yet.

2) This makes me laugh. So much.

3) Script Frenzy starts today. I am not going to attempt it this year, and I'll tell you why.
2009 (by myself): 6 pages. Finals happened.
2010 (collaborated with Kassy): 25 pages. Finals happened.
So yeah. I can sense a pattern here. Any of you participating?

Have a good weekend!

Why I Read/Write YA: A Response

2011-03-30T17:32:00.000-04:00

Erin at Quitting My Day Job asked in today's post what our high school experience was like and why we read/write YA books.

I went to high school in a relatively small town. Not the smallest by far, but small enough where people tend to remember your name. It was small enough that most everybody understood why it was hilarious that I screamed for five minutes at one of my best friends for a Senior Send-Off skit (I was the quiet one in school; she was the outspoken one).

Summarizing. Freshman year was alright, sophomore year was just OK, junior year was THE BEST EVER ZOMIGOSH!!!1one528@+42*!!~#%!!!one (you will never see me do this again, I promise), and senior year wasn't terrible.

My best friends were, and are, awesome. By the end of senior year, we had like a four-girl-band type of thing going. We even have this AMAZING graduating picture that Kirstin and I call Smartest to Dumbest. Kassy and Steph call it Least Common Sense to Most Common Sense. We're all very mean. :D I don't actually have a copy, so let me doodle it for you. Wow, this post is media-heavy.

Kirstin: Valedictorian, National Honors Society sash thing, Honors cords

Me: National Honors Society sash thing, Honors cords

Steph: Honors cords

Kassy: GRADUATED!

So yeah. But we actually spent most of high school writing this amazing series of short stories called EPSE. It's like if high school were an epic and had 13 main characters. Yeah, we didn't know what the heck we were doing.

I read YA because, well, it's fun to read. When I'm reading more age-appropriate books, I don't feel compelled to binge read them. I've never felt that sort of immediacy with an "adult" book, even Lord of the Rings, which I adore. And with YA, you can talk about a LOT of things. You know what I mean.

Why I write YA.

1) Force of habit. I've always written it. It's like my default setting. :D

2) I'd rather write about high school drama than college drama. (Sometimes I just sit in class and think, "I hate this place, I hate this place, I hate this place, I hate this place...") At least high school drama has hilarity potential.

3) Teenagers with their mood swings, dramatics, shenanigans, and hormones make for doggone entertaining characters. Real Life Example: At the beginning of senior year, my friend Kirstin had a crush on this boy she called the "Sun God". Or something like that. Well, she wasn't wearing makeup one day, and she thought she saw him pass by our cafeteria table. What did she do? She dove under the table and took Kassy with her. It was hilarious.

4) This.

"So, when you and Radar said you were going out to 'get slushies', was that your secret code for getting together and making out?"

Hydro/Radar is my OTP. (Yep. I ship characters I helped create.)

It's story time!

2011-03-28T17:28:00.001-04:00

Too exhausted for a proper post. Here's something from the hundred theme challenge. The prompt was Sixth Sense.

--

“Do you have any recurring dreams?”

Evan Lin just wanted to know why Lily Hale painted him in one of her original pieces for their sixth grade art class. In the painting, Evan and Lily were piercing a giant shadow with two glowing swords. Rays of light ran through the shadow like cracks.

In real life, they didn’t really talk that much at all. Usually when they passed each other in the hallway, they just smiled and nodded. When he asked her why she painted him, she just told him to walk with her after school.

And that led to her completely off-the-wall comment about dreams.

Evan replied, “I can never remember my dreams in the first place.” He looked at Lily from the corner of his eye. “Is that what it is?” He frowned and crossed his arms. “…You’ve been dreaming about me?”

Lily shook her head. “It’s not like that. I’ve only had a one dream with you. And I don’t know why you were in it because real life people always stay out of my head at night.”

Evan scratched the side of his head. “What do you mean by that?”

Lily sighed and ran her hands through her curly brown hair. “It’s like when I go to sleep and start dreaming, it’s not quite a dream. It’s like I enter a whole different world that’s just as real as this one. And I know that in dreams, everything seems real until you wake up. But even after I wake up, it’s still incredibly… real. For lack of a better word.” She took a deep breath. “So that’s what makes me think it’s a different dimension.”

“You know you sound crazy, right?” Evan laughed in attempts to lighten the mood.

Lily smiled and nodded. “Yeah, but I think you’re gonna keep listening because you really want to know where you came into play.”

Evan had to admit she was right. “That’s true. So what was that thing we were killing? Was it like that world’s version of Sauron or something?”

Lily shrugged. “I dunno. Like you, it’s a recent development.” She paused to think, then added slowly, “But I don’t think we were killing it.”

Evan stopped on the sidewalk and grabbed Lily’s shoulder. “We had swords. Glowing swords. We were stabbing a huge shadow. How is that not killing a bad guy?” He waved his right hand side to side. “You know what, nevermind. It’s just a dream you had.” He continued walking, but Lily just stood there.

“Um. Actually…”

--

Just the first draft, but yeah.

Have a good day, everybody!

Friday Fragments

2011-03-25T16:08:00.000-04:00

Wow, it's already Friday. It appears the timey-wimey-rollercoaster that comes after spring break has set in. (Timey-Wimey-Rollercoaster: Time appears to accelerate and weeks pass before you realize it.)

1) Don't know how I missed this last week, but they cast Katniss in The Hunger Games adaption. I was kind of rooting for this unknown actress on YouTube, but if they say she's good, then I'll trust their decision. Now I guess they're focusing on Peeta.

2) I became Facebook-popular this week with this music video I've been working on to Owl City's "If My Heart Was A House". Two weeks with Paintbrush and Windows Movie Maker. And it's not finished yet.

3) If you're like me, you might occasionally wonder what kinds of delightful stories JK Rowling is cooking up these days. College Humor has an answer.

4) A conversation from Wednesday:
Nurse: So what's your major?
Me: Creative Writing.
Nurse: Oh my gosh, WHY? What can you do with that?
Me: *Stunned laughter*
True story. Have to give her credit for being honest.

Well, have a great weekend, everybody!

The Hundred Theme Challenge!

2011-03-23T12:00:00.007-04:00

When I was a wee thing, only 16 years old (this is a joke), I stumbled across something called the Hundred Theme Challenge. Thought it looked cool. Never saved the prompts. Lost track of the website forever.

AND THEN I FOUND IT. HERE. Two years ago. I've tried to make a story of the hundred themes twice now. Both attempts failed miserably.

The rules are to write a story or create some kind of art with each of these themes. If you want to try it, well, go for it. And here are the themes I'm using.

Beginnings
Middles
Ends
Insides
Outsides
Hours
Days
Weeks
Months
Years
Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Purple
Brown
Black
White
Colourless
Friends
Enemies
Lovers
Family
Strangers
Teammates
Parents
Children
Birth
Death
Sunrise
Sunset
Too Much
Not Enough
Sixth Sense
Smell
Sound
Touch
Taste
Sight
Shapes
Triangle
Square
Circle
Moon
Star
Heart
Diamond
Club
Spade
Water
Fire
Earth
Air
Spirit
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Food
Drink
Winter
Spring
Summer
Fall
Passing
Rain
Snow
Lightning
Thunder
Storm
Broken
Fixed
Light
Dark
Shade
Who?
What?
Where?
When?
Why?
How?
If
And
He
She
Choices
Life
School
Work
Home
Birthday
Christmas
Thanksgiving
Independence
New Year
Writer's Choice
Writer's Choice
Writer's Choice
Writer's Choice
Writer's Choice

Isn't it glorious?

Plotting for NaNoWriMo. Yes, already.

2011-03-21T16:14:00.001-04:00

I don't mess around when it comes to plotting for NaNo. It's pretty much how I spend a good portion of the year.

March- May: Figuring out ideas and characters.
June- July: Deciding on an idea and working on fleshing out characters.
July-October: Plotting the entire story, beginning to end.
November: Obvious...

So these are the ideas I have for NaNo this year. So far. :D

Step in Time to My Heart (WT, albeit one that makes me laugh): Exactly what it sounds like. It's a love story about band geeks. Yay band geeks!
Sim Saves the Galaxy: A rewrite of NaNo '08, The Wonderful World of Imminent Doom. It's a story about this interplanetary war in a made-up galaxy called Tsu-Min. It's kind of worth the rewrite for this one line: "It's time to save the planet!"
Key to Hadley's Soul (WT): It like an AU version of our world where people are born with these things called "soul keys" that change in appearance as the person grows. Then one of the MCs, Hadley, loses his key and he starts to forget who he is. (I like this one.)
Level Up: A superhero story! It's about a college kid named Molly who has super strength and invisibility. Then she meets her arch nemesis who has no name yet, but he has a vast array of mind-related powers. (I like this one, too.)
Battlefield Suburbia (WT): It's about an angel/demon war. In the suburbs. (And this one, as well.)
Forever Saturday: Based on a lyric in an Eleventyseven song. "Every single day was a Saturday." Then I just thought, OH MAN! What if time just STOPPED and every day WAS a Saturday?! That would be crazy.

But yeah.

So, anyone weird like me and start planning for November insanely early?

Friday Fragments

2011-03-18T16:16:00.001-04:00

It is Friday, and it is the third day of absolutely gorgeous weather. I think I'm justified in sharing this song with you. It's called "Spring" by Your Heart.

It's also a free download if you absolutely must have it on your media playing devices. :)

1) Jesi Marie was kind enough to share this picture with me.

Thought the cheetah with an eyeglass was a bit random, but it's funny. :D

2) I've been showing this to everyone because it's just so funny. These people took the music video for Total Eclipse of the Heart and rewrote the lyrics so that the song fit the music video. Hilarity ensues like you wouldn't believe. Embedding has been disabled for it, but here's the link.

3) Did you hear about the Fukishima Fifty? They're these nuclear power plant workers who stayed behind at the plant to make sure that nothing worse happens, even though it greatly endangers their well-being. Now that's heroism, ladies and gentlemen.

Well, have a good weekend!

The Writer Nutrition Pyramid

2011-03-17T13:07:00.000-04:00

It's a bit flawed, but then again, it's just a joke.

(I got a little bored.)

Qs for Yous*

2011-03-16T15:01:00.001-04:00

*Title pilfered and modified from Rachelle Gardner. I am so sorry.

It's so beautiful outside that I can't concentrate on anything. I actually skipped class (OK, so that was more of the fact that I needed to go to the Secretary of State and get my registration renewed). So here are some questions for all of you out there.

Are you a plotter or a pantser? (To clarify, just in case: do you outline your stories, or do you make them up as you go along?)
I'm more of a plotter, but leave wiggle room.

Where's your starting point for writing? Do you usually think of the characters first? The basic premise? The plot? Title first? First sentence? Last sentence? A particular scene? Anything else I failed to mention?
I tend to flip-flop between the characters and the premise.

Music while you write?
Only instrumental here. Can't concentrate if it has words.

And now it's your turn. :)

Because the video isn't working.

2011-03-14T15:14:00.024-04:00

Here's a song called I Am The First Fifty Digits of Pi. It's kind of amazing.

The aforementioned proper post.

2011-03-14T15:14:00.017-04:00

So I finally heard about the New Play Project. And I got in. :D It actually turns out that one of my old classmates from EfA Drama and Screenwriting in high school is in the class, too. I don't know if I mentioned what we're actually going to be doing in the class. We're going to be writing a live serial over the semester, so that'll be really cool.

In honor of National Pi Day, here's a math-related love poem containing all the math concepts I understand. :) It's called Casting Nines.

If I were casting nines
And I cast out you
I’d cast out seven
And then me two

If we were a triangle
You’d be Leg B
I’d be Leg A
So the hypotenuse is you and me

If I was X
And you were Y
Then our love would be
(xy)2 = ∏

You’re my common denominator
My other digit and radius
The 1 degree who makes 360
Dividing by zero would destroy us

(xy)2 / 0 = ………

But since you’ve been gone
Since you left me
Our right triangle
Became my isosceles

I was casting nines
I cast out you
So I’ll cast out seven
And then me two.

Have a nice day, everybody.

Happy Pi Day!

2011-03-14T03:14:00.006-04:00

I scheduled this entry to post automatically at 3:14 in the morning. Well, EST.

Now here's what pi sounds like.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Proper post later. At 3:14 in the afternoon. :D

Sorry about that.

2011-03-13T20:42:00.000-04:00

Here's a puppy.

An Appeal for Sanity to Michigan's Governor

2011-03-13T19:32:00.002-04:00

(I know I have this tendency to get borderline political at times. But dang it, I am angry and I have a blog. With that being said...)

Dear Governor Snyder,

Let me tell you about my younger sister Laura. She's a better person than you'll ever be, so please attend carefully. Laura loves to sing and dance. She was in ballet last year, and she used to participate in Challenger League every year. She loves watching movies with the close caption on so she can copy down the words, and I swear she can act out entire movies by herself. She is funny and yes, she's spoiled, but she's spoiled sweet. She's endlessly supportive of everything everyone does - pretty much the world's #1 fan.

Yeah, Laura was diagnosed with moderate autism when she was two. Thankfully, she got a lot of support and help from WMU's ABA studies, the Croyden Avenue school, and lots of other schools with AI classrooms. It certainly helped that both my parents work with developmentally disabled adults. She graduated from Schoolcraft High School back in 2009 with her friend Travis. It was probably one of the happiest days of her life.

And let me tell you something about her teachers. They worked so hard with her. They taught her how to handle some everyday tasks, they got her involved in choir and gym, and they even pitched in and bought her a trophy when she graduated. And my sister, though a delight, can be a drama queen.

Let's cut to you. You are cutting all the wrong things. Get a clue, guy - when you start taking money from education, people get angry. People start wondering what they were on last November. And when you start taking money from education, here's some news. That affects their actual education. Now we're seeing special education cuts in schools all over the state. Over in Allegan, they are talking about just putting special ed students in regular ed classes. Even though these kids have completely different needs. That makes total sense.

It's bad enough that you're cutting from what the government apparently considers the expendable industry (it's more than obvious they think that), but now you are taking help from people who really need it. Hey, Mr. Snyder? At which point are you going to start twirling your moustache?

The rate of autism is not decreasing. 1 in 125 kids were diagnosed with it in 2009. This year, it's 1 in 110. Schools need proper funding to give them the education they need. Stop wearing your stupid hat and think of a better plan.

Sincerely,
Carissa Hanson

Friday Fragments

2011-03-11T13:59:00.000-05:00

1) So... with the New Play Project and the Creative Writing Awards... they said we would hear about both things shortly after spring break. Spring break has been over since technically Sunday. No news about anything. I wonder if they're trying to drive us insane.

2) It was my poor mother's 50th birthday on Wednesday. My uncle Chris asked her at her birthday party, "So, how does it feel to know half your life is over?"
Let me tell you something crazy about the March birthdays on my mom's side of the family, though. Mom and her younger brother, Uncle Kevin, are four years apart. Mom's birthday is March 9. Uncle Kevin's birthday is March 15. His oldest daughter Chelsea's birthday is March 5. My birthday is March 19. Chelsea and I are 4 years apart in age.
CRAZY WEIRD. I know.

3) Here are two of my best friends, Kirstin and Courtney, being hilarious. (Kirstin's iPod was hooked up to the sound system, I was pressing random buttons and landed on "It's All Coming Back to Me Now", and this happened.)

4) I found this cool website where they have a writing competition once a month, and it only costs $5 to enter. Yeah, I know. It's called WritersType.

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Awesome thing of the day: "I dare you all, test your strength: Open a book."

2011-03-10T16:18:00.000-05:00

So today on this blog, Letters of Note, they posted this awesome letter from Chuck Jones encouraging reading. Here's the actual letter:

Here's the actual post.

Word Usage: Say what you mean to say

2011-03-09T22:06:00.001-05:00

Earlier this evening, my friend Joe tried to define the word "manifest". I can't remember his exact wording now, but it was something like "something has a shape or it's known". And then I had a blog idea. :D

For the record, here's the dictionary definition for "manifest":

-adjective
1) readily perceived by the eye or the understanding; evident; obvious; apparent; plain: a manifest error.
2) Psychoanalysis . of or pertaining to conscious feelings, ideas, and impulses that contain repressed psychic material: the manifest content of a dream as opposed to the latent content that it conceals.
-verb (used with an object)
3) to make clear or evident to the eye or the understanding; show plainly: He manifested his approval with a hearty laugh.
4) to prove; put beyond doubt or question: The evidence manifests the guilt of the defendant.
5) to record in a ship's manifest.
-noun
6) a list of the cargo carried by a ship, made for the use of various agents and officials at the ports of destination.
7) a list or invoice of goods transported by truck or train.
8) a list of the cargo or passengers carried on an airplane.

Thank you, Dictionary.com. :)

Anyway, that just got me thinking about word usage and how it can be really easy to misuse a word. Like if you're not 100% sure what something means, but you say it or write it anyway. And then someone asks you what it means. Then what? Hate to sound rude, but you sound like you're just trying to be impressive.

Point is, if you're not 100%, you should just look the word up. If you know another word that more accurately fits the situation, use that word. It's OK if it's only two syllables. Honest! :D

And... yep. That's all.

Variety Show Skits!

2011-03-09T11:39:00.000-05:00

If you care to watch. (I'll write a proper post later.) Sorry about the quality on the live skits.

So, if you watched, hope you enjoyed it. :)

Something really random.

2011-03-07T11:24:00.000-05:00

So Blogger gives you stats for where everybody is coming from and what kind of systems they're using, and this just blew my mind:

I'm really ~~Dutch~~ cheap, so I'm still using a portable CD player (and calling them that without irony). But I had no idea you could get on the internet on an iPod! That's crazy.

The Hunger Games Love Triangle

2011-03-03T13:01:00.000-05:00

I don't know why love triangles are so popular these days, or maybe it's just the books I'm reading. Just look at the number of them (that I can remember) in Harry Potter alone:
Harry/Cho/Cedric.
Ron/Hermione/Krum.
Harry/Ginny/Dean.
Hermione/Ron/Lavender.
Snape/Lily/James.
Mrs. Norris/Filch/ Madame Pince (OK, just kidding there. Although...)

I'm sure we can all think of a few more love triangles in other books, but there is one I'd like to talk about in particular. Gale/Katniss/Peeta from The Hunger Games trilogy. Why? Because, and I say this as someone who has a low-tolerance threshold for romance, it's perfect. I'm going to try so hard not to give any big spoilers away. This will be difficult.

So first there's Katniss/Gale. They have been best friends for years. They go hunting together, they tell each other everything, and it's clear from the beginning that Gale at least has a thing for Katniss. He even has a cute nickname for her. They are a lot alike in personality; at the end of Mockingjay, Katniss said they're both very fiery (paraphrasing). To quote the first Veggie Tales movie, they're "two peas in a pod! Two humps on a camel! They always sway the same way!"

And then there's Katniss/Peeta. Gale might be Katniss' best friend, but Peeta actually manages to rival him in that area. But where Katniss and Gale are more fiery and obviously strong-spirited, Peeta is much calmer. He's strong-spirited, too, but in a quiet way. You know what I mean? He and Katniss complement each other.

Also, put them in a cave and look how adorable they get.

They are the sweetest. Ever. But let me tell you something else about the Peeta in the books! He is not quite that *ehem* handsome. (Or British. Heaven help us all if Peeta Mellark were British...)

I can hear it now. The gasps of shock. The WHAAATs of confusion. There is a love triangle and both "options" are not drop-dead gorgeous? YES! I KNOW! He's initially described as "medium height, stocky build, [with] blond hair that falls in waves over his forehead." It is just so refreshing to see a normal-looking person in a book. We can't all be supermodels.

So get to the point, Qzie. Why did this love triangle work so well?

For just so many reasons.

1) Because the choices mean something. You could interpret the triangle in a variety of ways, but here's how I saw it. Gale represented the life that Katniss had always known (that's not necessarily a bad thing, after all). Then Peeta represented the changes in their lives and their world.

2) Because it really could have gone either way. At the beginning of the first book, Gale and Katniss actually talk about running away together. And then... well, did you see the YouTube video? Point is, they both had a fair chance.

3) Because Gale and Peeta's characters weren't totally dependent on Katniss. One wasn't the Designated Love Interest and one wasn't the Other Boy. Their characters were totally fleshed out, and we're able to sympathize with all players.

4) Because when either of them were gone for an extended period of time, Katniss didn't have a complete meltdown. She was still able to function. And that's all I'll say about that...

5) Because we don't have to hear about it every other page! And it's not like over-the-top declarations of love! That YouTube video was the soppiest it got. And the actors actually made it soppier. It's gotta be one of the more honest portrayals of love I've read.

So yeah. That's why this particular triangle worked.

Awesome thing of the day: "Date a girl who reads..."

2011-03-01T12:16:00.000-05:00

Found this on the NaNo forums and had to share it.

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes. - Rosemary Urquico

Let's face it. We are kind of awesome. :D

Bananas Triumphant

2011-02-28T17:30:00.000-05:00

Today, I went grocery shopping for my grandmother because she has some mobility issues. She wanted three bananas. The self-checkout said that these three bananas only cost one penny. Who am I to argue with a checkout machine? :)

In other news... remember the post from a while back about the Frostic Creative Writing Awards and how I turned in a nonfiction piece about the time I went to the ER? Well, we got the email announcing the finalists for each category. There were nine for nonfiction. I was one of them. I think someone made a mistake.

Also, my sister just used a hilarious phrase. "Holy gosh." That's almost as funny as, "Bless my soul, what is this?"

In other-other news! The variety show went fantastically, thank you. :) I'll probably upload the videos sometime this week. I hear they are quite entertaining.

Friday Fragments

2011-02-25T17:37:00.000-05:00

It's Friday!

1) And it's my last spring break ever! I love spring break. It means the semester is halfway over, and the rest of the semester tends to go by so fast it gives you whiplash. My friend Kirstin and I are so excited for this one because it means we are PRACTICALLY GRADUATED. Woohoo!

2) Tomorrow night, our youth group is having its annual spaghetti dinner and variety show (I wrote most of the show. So yeah. :D) It's a fundraiser for our summer trip to Christ's Outreach for the Blind. And it's going to be so much fun.

3) I was listening to "If You Wanna, I Might" by hellogoodbye earlier and slowly realized that it's not a love song. It's a song about the query process! Pay attention to the lyrics and think about it:

So... that's all I got for today. Have a good weekend!

Rewriting as a Destructive Force

2011-02-23T21:16:00.001-05:00

There's this one story I've been working on since December 2006. First it was called Fine Line, then it was called At The Swing Set, then it was back to Fine Line, now it's Hating Keiran Holmes. I have been to hell and back with this beast. It took until April 2008 just to finish the first draft. I've lost count of how many revisions it's gone through since then.

Spot the difference:

(17-year-old-me who didn't know what the flip she was doing)

She hated him. She hated the way his black hair looked all shiny and soft and flipped whenever he turned to look at her. She hated how deep his dark green eyes were, and the little specks of gold that were in them. She hated the way he winked at her and his stupid lopsided grin. She hated it when the other girls would start giggling all over him, like he was some sort of celebrity to be giggled over and ogled at. And she especially hated it when the big idiot was nice to her!

(21-year-old-me who still doesn't know what the flip she's doing)

Caomhe thought she deserved a gold medal for not screaming when she found out Keiran was her biology lab partner. But she couldn’t say she didn’t share Keiran’s sentiment of, “No! Please, if you love us, no!”
The class laughed. Most of them had an awareness of Keiran and Caomhe’s five-year feud. Caomhe looked over at Fiona, who surely would empathize with her. Fiona struggled to contain her snickers. Caomhe glared at her. Some best friend.

So yeah. Big, dramatic changes in the last four-odd years. Then around the end of last year, I started thinking, "Wait. What if all this neurotic editing is just undoing things that are working in the story?" THAT... is what I like to call the Rewriting Cycle of Death. Like this:

1) Write first draft.
2) Edit the draft.
3) Repeat steps two and three to the point where none of the original manuscript remains.
4) Realize you have a whole new first draft.

At this point, I see two options. Recognize that you're being insane, even for a writer, or you can repeat steps two and three until they check you into the [mental] hospital.

Moral of the day: there is such thing as too much of a good thing. Even edits.

"Don't ever interrupt me while I'm reading a book!"

2011-02-21T13:16:00.000-05:00

(I don't actually have time for a proper blog post. Too much homework, and trying to do rewrites on a story.)

This is really funny, though. And yes, reading does make you totally gangsta now.

Friday Fragments

2011-02-18T16:12:00.000-05:00

Which means that because I'm too lazy to dedicate a blog post to one subject, I'll dedicate it to MANY!

1) Well, in case you haven't heard the tragic news, Borders is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which I just learned a few seconds ago (see this post) means they're reorganizing the company. Still, it's sad how they're closing 200 more stores.

2) I am not already planning for NaNoWriMo. I can't help it! When you're waiting for class to start, there's not a whole lot to do...

3) Remember a few weeks ago how the Midwest was in the midst of THE winter storm?

(At the end, I said, "But wait! You haven't seen the backyard!" It was pretty much the same and boring.)

Well, check this out.

It is like that everywhere. It's like, Snow? What snow?

4) Fun thing to do with Facebook. (Plundered it from Erin at Quitting My Day Job. :D) First, go to Facebook. Then, copy the following code into the address bar.
javascript:(function(){fcb=function(d){ktndata=d;var p=document.getElementsByTagName('img');for(var i in p){p[i].width=p[i].width;p[i].height=p[i].height;p[i].src=d.items[Math.floor(Math.random()*(d.items.length))].media.m;}};if(typeof ktndata=='undefined'){var jp=document.createElement('script');jp.setAttribute('type','text/javascript'); jp.setAttribute('src','http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne? tags=kitten&tagmode=any&format=json&jsoncallback=fcb'); document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(jp);} else{fcb(ktndata);}})()
Don't worry, it's harmless. To "fix" it, just go to your profile and all will be restored. (Also, you can do this with any website with pictures.)

5) Quote from class last night.
Teacher: "But actually, the first six months of a relationship are comparable to being mentally unstable."*
Me to Kirstin: (Quietly) "That explains Twilight."
Kirstin: (Collapses in laughter)
*It was something like that.

OK. I'll do a proper post on Monday. Since that seems to be my blogging schedule now. M/W/F. :) Have a good weekend, everybody!

WDIST Syndrome*

2011-02-16T15:15:00.000-05:00

*Why Did I Submit This Syndrome. Allow me to explain.

There's this class at school that I desperately want to take next semester. It's called the New Play Project. It's basically a collaboration between the Creative Writing students and the Theater students. This year, it'll be focused on creating a serial show.

I REALLY WANT IN THIS CLASS. But to get in it, you had to send a 10-60 page script to the professor and also tell him about your background in theater. So I polished up a piece that I wrote a little over a year ago (Peace, Love, Untied Sneakers), and sent it off last night. I also made a big, fat deal of my two years of a high school playwriting class because, as mentioned before, I REALLY WANT IN THIS CLASS.

So immediately after I hit Send, I thought, "WHY DID I JUST SEND THAT PIECE OF CRAP. It is awful! It wasn't ready! I am an iiiiiiiiidiot!" That is WDIST Syndrome.

(This is why I haven't started querying for any of my stories: fear that I will have a nervous breakdown.)

But today I got an email from the professor saying that it sounded good and he'll be in touch after break. So around March 7.

Here's hoping. *Fingers crossed*

Book Review: Geektastic

2011-02-14T23:22:00.000-05:00

First of all, happy It-Is-Practically-Spring Day. No joke. It reached 45 degrees today. So beautiful!

Now onto the review.

Geektastic is an anthology of geeky short stories, so it's hard to review it as one unit. There are fantastic stories, there are good stories, there are not-so-good stories. Overall, I would say the good and fantastic stories outweigh the not-so-good ones by a lot. There are also geek-themed comics in between the stories, and those are pretty funny. What really stood out to me was how most of the stories were about the geek or the nerd getting the object of their affections or getting together with someone. I mentioned in the Matched review that I usually can barely tolerate romance. But most of these authors handled the romantic elements brilliantly in a non-annoying, and admittedly entertaining fashion.

I promise I'm a girl. :)

So. Here are my thoughts on the stories that really stood out, at least to me. (I'll keep it brief.)

Definitional Chaos by Scott Westerfield
The whole thing is pretty much a TV Tropes story about your moral alignment (see this page for details. I'm neutral good. :D). What I really liked about it was how it kind of blurred the lines between reality and fantasy, somewhat. It's kind of hard to describe. Also, it was one of the few stories where the guy and girl did not get together! Refreshing. It's pretty intense (especially by the end), but pretty brilliant.

I Never by Cassandra Clare
What I really like about this is that it's about Internet fandom and online role playing, something which I'm sure a lot of us are familiar with (admit it), and the main character doesn't really identify as a geek. But then she finds a way to fit in with the others, and it's really a charming piece. I'm not doing it justice. The only con? I kept losing the Game. :/ By the way... I lost the Game.

Quiz Bowl Antichrist by David Levithan
This guy was so pandering to us book geeks. And I happily bought into it. You would have, too. It had everything that makes a story great. The main character had a tragic flaw, he had character development, there were hilarious moments, there were serious moments, there were sweet moments. It was perfect.

Secret Identity by Kelly Link
When I started reading this story, I got the creeps because of the speaker's tone. It freaked me the heck out, but I couldn't stop reading. As the story went on, it became clear that this was not just about fandom or conventions or anything else like that. It was an origin story. Like for a superhero. Once I realized that, it got much more epic. But I am still creeped by the repetition of "Paul Zell, dear Paul Zell" at the beginning.

Freak the Geek by John Green
I love this story because I can kind of see this happening at a larger school, and because the two girls in here remind me of my best friends. We are all such geeks. Anyway. What is really great about the story is that there's a lot of conflict, first between the two friends and the popular kids who are after them; second between the two friends. It's really fantastic and touching without being overly emotional.

This Is My Audition Monologue by Sara Zarr
This is the one I keep reading over and over again. I'm going to need a whole post to explain why this story is amazing. I might need to do a dramatic reading, I love this story so much. It's incredible. You know those stories where you just totally, completely identify with the main character? This was that story for me.
It is perfect. Everything is wonderful. I need a full post for this story.
Just read this part at the end:

The fact that I'm even here auditioning after what happened and the role I played in it just proves that I know the basic truth of plays and of life: that the show must go on. Even when it's hard to watch the show going on without you.
I'll take any part, I will, and if it's Onlooker #8 I will be the best Onlooker #8 this town has ever seen. But if you can't find a part for me I'm going to walk away. I'm not going to hang around in the shadows anymore. This time you'll remember my name.

OK. Those are like, half the stories. That should tell you something about this book. :)

I am totally doing a dramatic reading of This Is My Audition Monologue.

"So what's your major?" "Creative Writing." "Ohhhh."

2011-02-12T16:34:00.001-05:00

You know those people.

--

"So you’re a student, huh?"
"Yeah, over at Western."
"What’s your major?"
"Creative Writing."
"Ohhhh. How interesting." Read: "Ohhh. You have no chance of ever making it in this world."
"Yeah, it's a lot of fun." Read: "You and I have very different definitions of 'making it'."
"So what kind of things do you write?" Read: "If you were a writer."
"Oh, sci-fi, fantasy, mostly speculative fiction. That sorta thing." Read: "I am a writer, and you are some random stranger who has no idea what I'm capable of."
"Are you ever going to write a book someday?" Read: "You probably haven't even attempted to write an actual book."
"Actually, I've written three." Read: "I've written three. Wench."

--

Paraphrased from an actual conversation.

Moral of the story? Don't let the cynics get you down. Never stop writing. Never stop doing what you love.

I call this picture Good and Evil.

2011-02-10T13:10:00.000-05:00

Guess who's good and who's evil.

(Sorry about the quality; it's a cell phone picture.)

Editing scripts while sleep-deprived: A brief look.

2011-02-07T15:26:00.000-05:00

Script:

CHESTER
I used to be a Mountie, I'll have you know. That is...
(Looks haunted)
Before the Summer of the Squirrel Moose.
(He slowly puts his hands over his face, breathing heavily. The others just stare at him.)

ASHLEY
Sorry. Sometimes he has Squirrel Moose flashbacks.

TESSA
I'm sorry, but... what in the name of sanity is a squirrel moose?

ASHLEY
Half squirrel, half moose.

CHESTER
(In a dark voice)
All deadly.

Meanwhile, this whole time I've been giggling like mad. And, like I usually do when I'm overtired, I decide to bother my mother.

Me: Mom! Mooom! In the play, there's a Squirrel Moose!
Mom: *At a loss for words*
Me: It's half squirrel, half moose. All. Deadly.
Mom: *Sighs*

Book Review: Matched

2011-02-04T11:58:00.000-05:00

OK, so I'm not doing a vlog this time around. Don't know where my camera is.

I'd like to start by saying that I thought this book was going to be like The Giver meets The Hunger Games plus some romance. I was... kind of right. It's more like this:

I was not prepared for this. I had just finished reading Thirteen Reasons Why. (Reading binge) Add to the fact that I have a low tolerance threshold for lovey-dovey stuff (no offense), and... *sigh* I was so, so not prepared for this.

OK. So here's the summary from GoodReads:

Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate . . . until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black.

The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society's infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.

If you're in it for the love plot? It's pretty good. It's got a love triangle - no idea why love triangles are so popular these days, and why is it always two guys after one girl? - but it's pretty well done. It didn't really get on my nerves too much (except for the confession of love, but those almost always annoy me). And although I absolutely hate the cliche that if a guy and a girl are best friends, they must fall in love, Matched had a pretty good subversion with that.

If you're in it (like I was) for everything besides the romance? It's OK. It's not perfect by far, but it's OK. Through most of the book, I wanted to smack Cassia because it was so obvious that their government is evil, and she's just like:

OK, look. I'm fine with characters who trust their evil governments. Like in The Giver. I ADORE The Giver, and Jonas trusts his evil government through a lot of the book until he slowly finds out the truth about the world. But Cassia... *sigh* she can be really stupid. Sometimes she'll start thinking that maaaybe something's not quite right (and I'm like, NO, REALLY?!), but then she'll go right back to complete trust in the government. And that's stupid for any civilization, if you ask me. *Cough* But not getting political, this is so sad because she can also be really intelligent and a deep thinker, and... I dunno. I just don't know what to make of this chick.

So why did I keep reading? Because the other characters were clearly not like that. Cassia's mom, for example. There was a missed moment of awesome that I hope Allie Condie will make up for in the next book. Cassia's mom had to leave for a while, and (no spoilers) something went wrong and she started getting really nervous that her family was being punished because of her. And I was like, Whoa, what happened? Because it was obviously pretty big, and I wish we could have seen it properly. But after that, Cassia's parents obviously don't have a lot of trust in their government- and they WORK for them! Ha.

Now. Concerning the perspective and prose. It's in first person, and I kinda wish it were in third person omniscient because then we could see a lot more going on and we wouldn't miss out all the time on some really cool characters. But the prose. Oh my word. It is beautiful. You need to read some of this, you guys.

Now that I've found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night? My wings aren't white or feathered; they're green, made of green silk, which shudders in the wind and bends when I move - first in a circle, then in a line, finally in a shape of my own invention. The black behind me doesn't worry me; neither do the stars ahead.

I smile at myself, at the foolishness of my imagination. People cannot fly, though before the Society, there were myths about those who could. I saw a painting of them once. White wings, blue sky, gold circles about their heads, eyes turned up in surprised as though they couldn't believe what the artists had painted them doing, couldn't believe that their feet didn't touch the ground.

That's just off the first page. And it only gets better.

It's no Hunger Games, but you know what? It's way better than Twilight. (There, I said it, go ahead and yell at me.)

It's not a bad book. I'm being harder on it than I should because it's clear that the love story is at the forefront (at least during this one; I don't know about the next two books) (oh yeah, by the way, this is a trilogy, apparently). So basically, only check out this book if you're into romance with other stuff going on. Or if you're like, in that kind of mood.

SNOWMAGEDDON.

2011-02-01T23:02:00.000-05:00

For those just tuning in, THIS IS THE STORM OF THE EVER-LOVIN' CENTURY. Two inches of snow per hour. People are stuck on LSD.*

*Lake Shore Drive. Why, what did you think I meant?**
**Kidding. And yes, the newscasters seriously called it that.

Why am I blogging about this? Because it's either this or homework.

Creative Writing Awards.

2011-01-31T19:13:00.000-05:00

People outside Michigan wouldn't know it, but WMU is really artsy. Name your art. There's a major for that. Aha.

So there are these Creative Writing Awards held for the writer-type students with four categories (Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Drama). I didn't have enough time to whip any of my stories or plays into shape, so I turned in a nonfiction piece about the time I went to the ER. It's a really funny story. And here it is if you would like to read it.

--

I would hate having epilepsy if my seizures weren’t so hilarious. I either have myoclonic seizures, which are basically twitches with flair, or absence seizures. I can’t remember having absence seizures, so I don’t know what those are like.

After I was diagnosed in 2005, my brain refused to cooperate with the various medications. Keppra had me swinging moods every ten minutes. Topamax tried so hard to keep the seizures under control. The key word there was “tried”. Around the time I started KVCC in 2007, Dr. Fain switched me again to Lamictal. For a month or so, things went brilliantly. It didn’t screw around with my moods and I stopped “spazzing out”.

Then one night in late September, I stayed up until one in the morning, which would not have been a big deal if my alarm weren’t set for 7 AM, and if lack of proper sleep weren’t one of my triggers.

I woke up the next morning with a dull headache and the feeling that sparks were flying in my head. This was normal – just an aura warning me that if I didn’t take my meds soon, I was about to spazz out.

I took my medication with some difficulty because my hands kept shaking, and expected that to be the end of it. But not today, oh no, not today, because I was stupid and deprived myself of sleep. In fairness, I really expected the seizures to stop by the time I got out of my first class.

This did not happen, of course. I had a few small seizures during English, but kept fidgeting so people wouldn’t notice. They’re going to stop soon, I kept thinking. Just keep calm and stay focused on something. When I got out of my seat as class ended, my knees buckled. I caught the table just before I fell, and nobody had seen it happen.

That’s when I started to realize that my seizures weren’t screwing around.

Because I was stupid and too stubborn to admit that something was horribly wrong with my head, I went to the cafeteria to finish some math homework. There were three hours until my next class and I figured that this would all be over by then. There was just one problem. I couldn’t do my math homework because my hands kept shaking. I was literally unable to form a legible letter or number. I could handle falling out of chairs, but not being able to carry out a task that basic terrified me.

After a few more pathetic attempts at writing, I gave up and did the only thing I could do. I stared at my math homework and willed it to finish itself. I tried this for a couple minutes before my best friend Kassy walked up. I must have looked like I was about to burst out crying (which was true) because she asked what was wrong.

“I can’t do my homework because I keep having seizures…”

Kassy stared at me for a moment. “What?”

So I explained what had been happening. When Kassy asked me why I was even at school, I used the sad excuse that, “I thought they would go away!” We called my mom, who said that if the seizures didn’t stop within fifteen minutes, then I had to go to the emergency room.

The seizures seemed to take that as a challenge. Instead of “Cut it out,” they heard, “I wonder how many times I can spazz out in a minute!” When I started having seizures every two seconds – literally – it was obvious that it was time to go to the emergency room.

Kassy found her cousin to drive us there, seeing as someone needed to keep an eye on me in case I had a grand mal seizure. It should have taken us twenty minutes to get to Bronson’s emergency room. With Danielle, it took us fifteen, and that was only because none of us were that familiar with the maze of one-way streets.

When we found the emergency room, Danielle dropped Kassy and me off at the door while she parked. I stumbled in and found that I didn’t really know what to say to the nurse at the front desk except, “I keep having seizures.”

It was admirable how the nurse managed to look so bored. “OK. Can I get your name and information?” she asked. After we had gone through the ER niceties, they put me in a wheelchair and had us wait for ten minutes or so. I started to relax because I wasn’t having seizures every few seconds, and because it was obvious that I was not going to make it to math class.

Another nurse came to wheel me to one of the rooms. He asked me some general questions about the seizures as we weaved through the hallways before we stopped at one room in the boonies of the ER. The bed was set up with side rails to keep me from falling. As I started to get out of the wheelchair, my knees buckled again, but I caught myself on the bed. After the nurses made sure I wasn’t dead, they told me to change into one of those horrible hospital gowns.

Those things are tricky. There is no indication which side is the front, and you have to tie it shut. The whole time I tried to figure it out, I wondered why they didn’t just make one that you could slip over your head. It would make much more sense.

My parents showed up after I had been there for a half hour or so. They tried their best to act like the whole thing wasn’t freaking them out. Kassy and Danielle left to get food, and Kassy promised to get me a donut. Donuts are good.

I was still having seizures too frequently for their liking, so they decided that the best thing to do was to give me a shot of Adavan. Like most rational people, I hate shots. When they said that it was also a pill, I had to protest. “Why can’t I have the pill?”

But they wouldn’t let me have the pill because “Pills don’t work as quickly.” I was ready to call shenanigans on the whole thing, except that made sense.

The needle required for the Adavan was roughly the size of the Empire State Building. I could be exaggerating here. When I saw it, I asked if they were sure that they couldn’t give me the pill. They were sure.

I relaxed the best I could. Needles are always worse if you’re expecting them to kill you. In spite of that, the shot was like a tour of the seventh circle of Hell. I wept like a small child.

They were right, though. The shot worked very quickly. Within an hour, the seizures had completely stopped and I was about ready to fall asleep. By 7 PM, I was back home sleeping.

A week later, they upped my medication levels from 100 mg twice a day to 150 mg. Also, I learned that I can’t function on only six hours of sleep.

--

Hope you enjoyed that if you read it. If you didn't, here's a list of Neil Gaiman facts.

On the 13 Reasons Why video.

2011-01-26T10:24:00.000-05:00

The vlog post has been edited. It's now in two parts. If you're only in it to see an evil cat fall off the bed, that's in the second part. :)

This is the first time in my life I've been considered stylish.

2011-01-25T17:10:00.000-05:00

I love the internet. I do.

Erin over at Quitting My Day Job, decided that I deserved this Stylish Blogger Award. Thank you very kindly, Erin! I have no idea what stylish blogging means, but apparently I'm doing something right with this thing. :) If you haven't read Erin's blog, you really should. Lots of great insight and stories. She actually up and moved to Mitten, USA to concentrate on writing. Now that is dedication to your craft, people.

So there are some rules for this award.

1) Thank the person who gave you this award and link back to them.
2) Share seven things about yourself.
3) Pass the award the bloggers whom you have recently discovered and who you think are great.
4) Contact the bloggers you've chosen and let them know about the award.

OK, seven things.

1) I have a scar on my right hand from when I fell down a flight of stairs three years ago. It's really faint, but it's there.
2) I've had the nickname Qzie since I was fourteen. It came from a story that a few of us were collaborating on. And by gum, it was hilarious. And it could definitely be salvaged if we tried.
3) I didn't grow up on Harry Potter. I grew up on A Series of Unfortunate Events. And you know what? I still prefer ASoUE. And I am not ashamed of that.
4) I keep using the name "Charlie" for characters and have no idea why.
5) My catchphrase in high school was: "Look! It's the ice cream man! Let's go!" For explanation, see #2.
6) Now my catchphrase is: "Allons-y, Alonso!" Yes. I am that nerd.
7) The only piece of writing that I ever turned in to a contest* was for this play competition about finding your voice. My skit was called "Stockholm Syndrome: 'I Love You, Can I Use The Bathroom?'" It was one of five winners. I hated it so much. But the actors were so funny they made me kind of tolerate my nonsense.

*I wasn't going to, but my best friend grabbed the script from my backpack and turned it in. Ah, best friends. Always shenaniganizing.

Now the people who will probably notice someone with a nearly unpronounceable username giving them the Stylish Blogger Award. Whatever that means.

DaveTree Photography
This is a Blog
Kara Mustafa
Fiction Fusion

We are so stylish with our blogging. Apparently. :)

Tragic heroes and Mary Sues. This is going somewhere great.

2011-01-25T01:10:00.000-05:00

Here's your literary term of the day: Aristotle's tragic hero. If you don't know what it is, well, read up. :)

1. The tragic hero is a character of noble stature and has greatness. This should be readily evident in the play. The character must occupy a "high" status position but must ALSO embody nobility and virtue as part of his/her innate character.

2. Though the tragic hero is pre-eminently great, he/she is not perfect. Otherwise, the rest of us--mere mortals--would be unable to identify with the tragic hero. We should see in him or her someone who is essentially like us, although perhaps elevated to a higher position in society.

3. The hero's downfall, therefore, is partially her/his own fault, the result of free choice, not of accident or villainy or some overriding, malignant fate. In fact, the tragedy is usually triggered by some error of judgment or some character flaw that contributes to the hero's lack of perfection noted above. This error of judgment or character flaw is known as hamartia and is usually translated as "tragic flaw" (although some scholars argue that this is a mistranslation). Often the character's hamartia involves hubris (which is defined as a sort of arrogant pride or over-confidence).

4. The hero's misfortunate is not wholly deserved. The punishment exceeds the crime.

5. The fall is not pure loss. There is some increase in awareness, some gain in self-knowledge, some discovery on the part of the tragic hero..

6. Though it arouses solemn emotion, tragedy does not leave its audience in a state of depression. Aristotle argues that one function of tragedy is to arouse the "unhealthy" emotions of pity and fear and through a catharsis (which comes from watching the tragic hero's terrible fate) cleanse us of those emotions.

This is why the fifth Harry Potter book is my favorite, even though everybody seems to complain that Harry's being a whiny little jerk who thinks he knows better. And I'm like, YES! Harry's being a whiny little jerk who thinks he knows better!

First of all, he was a heavily traumatized fifteen-year-old in the book. Of course he'll act like that. Second of all, it comes back to bite him in the derriere in a major way. He is so sure that he knows what he's doing when it comes to Voldemort and that prophecy, that he basically causes Sirius to get killed. No, it's not completely his fault. But it's partially his fault. If he had, y'know, tried a little harder with Occlumency or called Sirius directly on those mirrors, the battle at the Ministry probably never would have happened.

But then the Ministry workers wouldn't have seen ol' Voldy escaping, and who knows what would have happened in the sixth and seventh books. So yeah. Kind of brilliant how that turned out, actually.

Now... Mary Sues. Some people seem to think that Mary Sues don't have any flaws at all. I don't think that's necessarily true. I don't want to use a certain hated book and movie series (which, believe me, I have a whole laundry list of reasons for despising), so I'm going to resort to what Google says is the worst fanfic of all time.

My Immortal. (Warning: TV Tropes link.) (Now you can really tell I'm a nerd.)

I am so sorry. If you haven't come across this... thing before, I don't encourage you to take it on. It's dangerous to your sanity and you probably will start losing faith in humanity and literacy.

But basically, the main character (Ebony... Enoby? It's anyone's guess) is just this horrible, horrible person. She tortures and murders people, she's self-absorbed, she dresses and acts like she's been around the block a few times, and... ugh, just plain evil. Her (main) boyfriend kills himself twice (*sigh* yeah...) and she doesn't even react. Basically, even though she has nothing BUT flaws, she never makes a mistake that she's held accountable for. And everybody who knows her either wants to be her friend or falls in love with her or is Voldemort. Wait, no. Voldemort falls in love with her, too, I think. I dunno, I can't remember.

You can see what I'm talking about, though, right? Yeah.

So... in other news... I guess the video on 13 Reasons Why isn't working correctly? :/ I'll post it again tomorrow in two parts.

Thirteen Reasons Why: A Book Review

2011-01-20T11:58:00.002-05:00

Update! It's in two shorter parts now, so hopefully it will be easier to load. :)

Part One:

Part Two:

Sorry it's so long. There's a clip of the cat falling off the bed at the end. ^^;

48 days until spring break!

2011-01-10T23:35:00.000-05:00

First day back, and I'm already counting down. Though in my defense, counting down helps the semester pass more quickly.

This semester I'm taking 16 credits again, just so my last semester (EVER! AHAHAHAHA) will be easier. It's also the first semester I've ever not had an English class. So that's weird. But anyway, this semester consists of:

Human Communication Theory- had this today, and it seems like it'll be really cool. The teacher said if we missed class, then he and the TA would hunt us down, and then asked the TA to show us their gun. So that was hilarious. It also only lasts 50 minutes, and there are like, 140 students in the class. I'm not even exaggerating. We have a whole lecture hall, and it was almost packed.
Environment, Technology, and Values- had this today, too, and it doesn't seem too bad. Had to take an Area 7 class to graduate, otherwise I probably wouldn't take it.
Intro to Media and Telecommunications- I'm really excited for this one because it's in the Chemistry building, and I've never been in there. Plus my cousin is in this class, so that'll be cool.
Interpersonal Communication- the book makes this look interesting.
Psych Perspectives on Gender- Kirstin had to take an Area 3, and we usually take a class together every other semester. So yeah. It sounds really easy.

Meanwhile, I'm going to be working on a one act play for the New Play Project. The NPP is this class Western has every year during Summer I, and it's kind of a collaboration between the Creative Writing and the Theater students. Basically, we write the plays (and by "we", I mean the lucky students who get accepted), and the Theater students perform them. *Thumbs up*

So that's what's new! :)

"Advice to a Newly Blogging Aspiring Author"

2010-12-31T02:32:00.000-05:00

Thought, given the nature of most of you (forgive the awkward phrasing; I actually am typing this at 2:30 in the morning), this might be of interest.

OK, I lied.

2010-12-25T22:34:00.000-05:00

Guerrilla Handbell Strikeforce

2010-12-25T12:45:00.000-05:00

Here's a great one from Improv Everywhere.

OK, I promise the next one won't be a video.