Oh wow. I am in love with this baby.
Because sometimes I just need some happy.
So, today, Elizabeth and I walked to the SPO to check our mail before lunch, and on the way back, we saw two girls standing on the sidewalk next to something small. When we got up close to them, we saw it was this little bird, sitting on the sidewalk munching on a soggy bagel. It wasn't moving much, even though Elizabeth, the two girls and I got very close to it - one of the girls even tried to touch it. It moved a bit then - just kind of fluttered away. It looked injured, so Elizabeth and I set off trying to find someone who could take care of the bird. It was quite the adventure - two English majors lost in Spencer looking for a teacher. Eventually we found one but it turned out that the bird could fly a bit, so it probably wasn't injured - the consensus was that it was just really, really wet (it's been pouring all day) and that its feathers were soaked, so it was having a hard time getting off the ground. The picture is not our bird, but one similar that I found on the internet.
Anyway, other than that, not much has been going on. I wrote two papers this week, one on Rumpelstilzchen and one on Moll Flanders. Neither paper was very good. And I turned in a copy of what I've got so far of the Baby Reaper story. Which, I discovered later, I'd forgotten to edit. In the last post I included the first paragraph, with author notes. Apparently I turned it in like that.
I am SO embarrassed. Ugh.
But Kevin didn't seem too perturbed by it. I'll send more as soon as I have more, and once that bit is edited.
I cannot believe I sent him the unedited version. *sigh*
So, as it is right now, my reworking of the Baby Reaper story begins like this (I have a good bit more, this is just the first paragraph):
"It was Halloween in Bellewood, and at eight in the morning everything glittered, covered in a hard frost that had crusted on my windshield and was nearly impossible to get off with the little plastic scraper I’d bought last winter. I was standing beside my car, pounding at the ice on the windshield and trying to get it to crack, when my neighbor Burt Arthur ambled over. Burt had moved into the apartment next door to me six months ago, when the previous tenant, Mr. Harper, DIED SOMEHOW. FIGURE THIS OUT RIGHT NOW. Since then, SOMETHING ELSE. OKAY."
This is how I write 90% of the time - I do bits and pieces and all-caps stuff that isn't quite worked out yet. I didn't realize until today how odd this must look to other people until Jessica read this paragraph and snorted so loud half the library was staring at us.
I do brainstorming like this as well - it's like talking to myself on paper. And usually my conversations are relatively amusing.
For example:
"Okay. There is this picture I have, and it’s a baby grim reaper carrying around a scythe and a stuffed bunny. I am in love.
Okay so let’s think. It’s Halloween and this girl goes out trick-or-treating with her thirteen-year-old little brother. She’s early twenties, I think. Lucy. She dresses up as a witch because it’s the easiest costume she can come up with in the shortest time. She doesn’t really want to go out with her brother.
Anyway, they’re walking around, getting candy from the neighbors, and she sees this toddler-sized kid that is sitting alone on the sidewalk, dressed as a grim reaper. She decides to ‘keep him.’ He kills people by pointing at them and crying.
She tells her friend about him.
Problems: her boyfriend. The baby doesn’t like him. He’s an ass, anyway. Lucy has to save the boyfriend several times.
New romance! Baby likes him.
Enemy girl – the reaper’s mom? – tries to take him back. She wants to use him to wreak havoc on the world. She actually had sex with a real Reaper, and thus gave birth to a reaper baby. Can tell it’s a reaper baby even when it’s not wearing the robes because of its eyes – when it cries, its eyes go all black like the demons on Supernatural. Reapers are apparently not supposed to have children, as they’re dead anyway.
Random quote to use - “I dunno, I just like having living souls in my teapot.” – Justin"
As you can see, very little of this actually made it into the story as it stands now. But it still makes me laugh to read it. Lol. All of this was done at the very very very beginning of the original writing of the story. *Sigh* How things change...
This is the picture that inspired it all. I've posted it before, but I have since remembered who the artist is. Her name is Sarah Mensinga, and she is awesome. Here is her website:
http://www.sarahmensinga.com/
No more swine flu!
After four days of doing nothing but sit in my room, I have been officially fever-free for twenty-four hours!
That means I can LEAVE MY ROOM!!
Of course, all I'm going to do with this new-found freedom is head to the library and do work. But I won't be in my room. Ha!
Well, I have swine flu.
Ugh.
I went to Health Services today and spent an hour there (mostly due to the fact that the nurses were chatting behind the counter about some concert or other and completely ignoring those of us in the waiting room.) And when I came out, I was on The List. The List alerts the faculty and staff of the people who have swine flu, and it is updated every day, I believe. And sometimes The List causes Deans Bruce and Murphy to come and get the flu-stricken student and cart them off to a university property that has been converted into an infirmary. They come in what I have come to call the Death Van, because they come to get the student wearing face masks and rubber gloves, and they take them away in (I think) a Bacchus van, but I may be wrong about the type of vehicle. Either way, the whole process reminds me of the "Bring out your dead!" bit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
I, however, got lucky, in that I have a single. So I can just lock myself in my room and not come out except to go to the bathroom, which I then have to wipe down with Clorox wipes. It's really not too bad, except for the coughing and the aching and the fever and the lack of sleep (due to the coughing). And people bring me food three times a day. For the time being I'm going to watch movies and try to sleep, but I have two papers due next week... I'm not sure what I'm going to do about those. *Sigh*
I've made some changes...
Posted
As you can see, I've made some changes to the blog. New template, new title, et cetera.
I'm also going to be changing the URL address, as "igotoschoolinacastle.blogspot.com" isn't going to be applicable much longer - the prompt for all this change, actually, as I will no longer be going to school in a castle in a few months. I'm not 100% sure what the new URL would be, but I'm going to try for something like rebeccabwells@blogspot.com. Something that can change with the times and new titles. Lol.
Remedie for Love, by Michael Drayton
Since to obtaine thee, nothing will me sted,
I have a Med'cine that shall cure my Love,
The powder of her Heart dry'd, when she is dead,
That Gold nor Honour ne'r had pow'r to move;
Mix'd with her Teares, that ne'r her true-Love crost,
Nor at Fifteene ne'r long'd to be a Bride,
Boyl'd with her sighes, in giving up the Ghost,
That for her late deceased Husband dy'd;
Into the same then let a Woman breathe,
That being chid, did never word replie,
With one thrice-marry'd's Pray'rs, that did bequeath
A Legacie to stale Virginitie.
If this Receit have not the pow'r to winne me,
Little Ile say, but thinke the Devill's in me.
I found it at breakfast this morning in an anthology of sixteenth-century verse, while waiting on Jessica to arrive. It made me happy. Lol.
So, since I've last posted, I attended the Sewanee Writers' Conference, worked for the rest of the summer, moved in to Humphreys for my senior year, and attended my grandparents' (Gram and Pop's) 50th anniversary party. Things I have learned:
1. Drunken writers are a really fun crowd.
2. Being a secretary, while okay for a summer job, is not a career I would ever choose.
3. Living in a suite with five of one's sorority sisters is probably the best thing ever.
4. Being a senior is scary.
5. If I can find a man I want to stay with for fifty years, my life will be pretty much set.
Also, I've found a new hobby - quilting. I'm working on making one for my grandmother (Mama Gail, not the 50th anniversary grandmother, though her 50th is coming up in December) for Christmas, because last Christmas she gave me a sewing machine and requested that I make her something pretty. So, I'm making a quilt. I cut out all the pieces this past weekend while I was home, but I can't work on it while I'm at school because I didn't bring back my sewing machine, or, indeed, the pieces. So I'll piece it all together the next time I'm home, hopefully, and then I can bring it back here to quilt whenever I've got time because I'm going to quilt it by hand. I'm also thinking about making a Shakespeare quilt - more info on that later.
You may have noticed, thus far, the lack of mention of the Baby Reaper story. That's because I'm mad at it. I had fully intended on finishing it by September 26th, thus taking a year to write it. A pretty little circle, isn't it? Unfortunately, I took it to Conference and then it changed. Big time. So I'm reworking a good portion of what I've already written and completely redoing the beginning (and a lot else besides.) I still could've had it finished by September 26th, had I written about 2500 words a day (assuming my goal was 100,000 words) but... I didn't. It wasn't coming along as fast as I wanted it to, and, being the perfectionist that I am, I had to have everything reasonably good before I could move on to a new scene. So, as it stands, I have a collection of jumbled scenes in no particular order that I need to piece together. Were that all, and the scenes, once together, made up a novel, I'd be okay with it. But, no. They might make a quarter of the novel as I see it now. So, I've set myself a new goal. I'm going to have the damn thing finished by Christmas. That's the end of it. If I don't have a complete draft by then I think I might just explode.
This new determination has been working, off and on, to force me to write a bit every day. It might just be a sentence or two, given my bent toward procrastination, but it's at the very least in my mind. So I'm pulling together what little self-discipline I have and putting together what should be the first 20 or so pages by Friday. Shouldn't be too extremely hard, since I am reusing a bit of what I had before, but the beginning is a lot of new material too. I've told Kevin to be really horrid to me if I don't turn in 20 pages by Friday; whether he is or not remains to be seen.
The picture accompanying this post doesn't really have a lot to do with the content... I'm just really amused by it.
