Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Really weird story. And it was about a story... huh. So I
turned in a finished draft of a short story to Kevin, with the purpose of fixing major problems so I can turn it in for the Conference. The morning after I turned it in, I woke up having this really absolutely horrible panic
attack - like hyperventilating, crying, shaking, the whole deal. Scared the crap out of me, lol. I went and told Kevin about it... and he laughed and told me I didn't have anything to worry about and that nothing I've done has ever been completely irredeemable, which is nice to hear, but... yeah. I'm still worried about it. It's about these high school kids who build a tree house because they're bored and have run out of zombie-related things to do. It's a little strange. I think it needs more zombies.
I guess I freaked out because it's the first thing I've had a completed draft of in a while... long pieces are easier because you don't have to worry about being finished, I guess. You just don't think about the end until you get close to it. I feel like the panic attack once it's done will be correspondingly larger, though, lol...
We'll see how it goes. Kevin and I are meeting after break to talk about Tree House and also Mothwing, because I turned in more of that too. More news on that later, I guess...
Cadence and Cambiata (two a capella groups, in both of which I am vice president) are getting intense. We're learning all kinds of new music for Cadence and have a concert on March 25 (TWO DAYS BEFORE COMPS UGH) and Cambiata's finally getting rolling after half a semester of planning. It's going to be awesome if we can pull it off... which I think we'll be able to. Catherine's got a lot of new, hard music for us, but all of it's fun and a good bit of it was arranged by herself and Cain. So... should be interesting.
Oh, and I did an interview with the Southern Teachers' Agency. Woo hoo for teaching jobs... I guess.
And that picture is like my favorite thing right now.
Well, here we are, almost to the middle of February and it's only snowed a little bit in Sewanee. My mother tells me that it continues to snow in Jackson, so much so that she and my dad can't go to work.
I'm jealous. They'd never cancel classes for snow in Sewanee... they'd just dig tunnels to the academic buildings so we could go. Ugh.
I've been ridiculously busy for the past couple of weeks. First it was Rush - Formal House, Return House, and Shake Day. Then there was a lot of reading to be done for various classes. Then it was Prom, and Crush Party. And now it's papers. I have a paper due tomorrow (Tuesday), two Thursday (for the same class!!), and one next Tuesday, a week from today. I've finished the one for tomorrow, thankfully - all that's left is proofreading - but I still haven't gotten anything of note done on the rest.
As for the funeral, that's where I stopped in Mothwing late last week before turning it in to Kevin - poor Gideon had to watch his own funeral (can you imagine how awkward that would be? Ick.) I haven't had a chance to go back to it yet, due to all these stupid papers, but I plan on working on it tonight. Kevin has introduced me to a writing program called Ommwriter that I am absolutely in love with - it essentially takes over your whole screen with this nice white picture of some trees in snow and you type in the middle of it and it plays various ambient sounds like ocean waves (my favorite) and it's just awesome. Yep. So go look!
http://www.ommwriter.com
They have a nifty video and everything.
In other news, I have started going to the gym. I know, scary, right? But it's becoming a regular thing since Elizabeth, Jessica, and Kayce all go regularly, and Eliza goes sometimes too. And today I met a man named David Coe while I was on the stationary bike. I accidentally threw my iPod at him and then later he introduced himself because of a book I was reading (The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan, fourth in his Wheel of Time series). Apparently Mr. Coe also writes fantasy for Tor, Robert Jordan's publisher. I am to read one of his books whenever I finish with Robert Jordan. And I think I will. It was just weird enough of an encounter to make sure I do, eventually, lol.
Soooo it's been a while. I've had Christmas break - a month at home is a long time. Here is the Sparknotes edition:
Arrived at home - yay good food - Grandparent's Anniversary Party (Mom going INSANE) - Baking frenzy - Drew's new boyfriend Adam yaaaaaay! - fight with idiot ex - SCARIEST MOVIE EVER (Paranormal Activity - I had to sleep with the lights on for days) - sitting at home - Lifetime movies - babysitting - awkward Facebook messages from another ex that I'm still not sure how to interpret - packing up - back to Sewanee!
And so there was my break. And now I'm back at Sewanee, and we had our first day of class today. My schedule is incredible - somehow I've managed to only have Tuesday/Thursday classes and therefore a FOUR-DAY WEEKEND. Yes. It's awesome.
It's nice to be back on the mountain - I'm in a much better place than I was when I left. I'm writing again, which is fabulous and wonderful and amazing - a new project tentatively titled Mothwing. And I'm reading a ton of good things for classes and for fun. I'm generally a lot happier right now, though that could go downhill quickly since I'm comping this semester - ugh. (For those of you who don't go to Sewanee or another school who does this, comping = comprehensive exams = everything you've ever learned for your major and some stuff you haven't. It sucks.)
I still haven't a clue what I'm going to do after graduation, but I figure that'll come to me at some point. I'm thinking about teaching at a private school. Maybe. Or I might be flipping burgers at McDonald's for the rest of my life. Or living in a box under the bridge, as was my original plan.
This one is kind of ramble-y. I don't have a lot to say, because I haven't done much since being back, and there wasn't much of break worth commentary unless you count all that drama, and I really don't want to rant about that on the internet. So yeah. Good times.
Also, I found this funny little picture of Shakespeare and it made me really happy.
I have two due Monday and Tuesday - one on Browning's "My Last Duchess" and one on Borderline Personality Disorder. I'm going to finish the Browning paper today before lunch - I'm set on doing that. The Borderline paper could probably wait until tomorrow. With that and the stories, I feel like I'm drowning in paper.
Had a meeting with Kevin this past week to talk about "Gnomes." He liked it, but he pointed out some things I'd done that I shouldn't have or that I should've done but didn't. It's going to be a pretty long story when I'm done revising it - maybe thirty or thirty-five pages, double-spaced. I'm also supposed to be working on the Baby Reaper story, to finish it. Or at least get close. He says he expects about fifty pages of writing by the end of the semester (on both stories combined). Well, I've already got that, so now it's just a matter of finishing and polishing. I'll have more time to do that after these papers, and maybe I can even squeeze out some time during Thanksgiving Break.
I am so looking forward to Thanksgiving... It feels like forever since I've been home, and I miss everybody so much. My grandfather's 70th birthday is next week, but I'm going to miss the party since I don't get to go home till the Tuesday after that. Sad :(
I went and saw Threepenny Opera last night. It was a pretty good show - the set was amazing, the costumes were cool. Acting and singing was good. I was a little disappointed at the ending - it was a little too Gilbert and Sullivan for the type of show it was attached to. Also, Sam, who played Crookfinger Jake, was creepy. The cast interacted with the audience a lot, and at one point he came and stood right in front of me, stole my program, and stared at me for like five minutes. The best part was, he never broke character, never smiled. He started laughing a bit when he had to sing, but I was impressed, and amused.
Well, I'm done with breakfast, so now I must start writing.
Well, this past weekend was fall party weekend and homecoming. Fun stuff lol. I honestly didn't do much... the weekend was kind of tame for me.
I did start a new story, though - it was jumping up and down and screaming, demanding to be written. I had to put down Baby Reaper to do it, I couldn't get it out of my head. This one is odd. It's about this girl named Miranda who goes to visit her grandmother and ends up having to deal with all this weird stuff like the gnomes that live in the chicken coops in her back yard and the woman named Valentine who takes care of the gnomes. I'm kind of excited about it, but I'm afraid it's going to be really really long like the Baby Reaper story (which I still haven't finished... need to do that.) But if I don't finish the gnome story before Tuesday (when it's due) I'm going to finish it by Friday or Saturday and send him the rest so we can talk about it all at once. Or that's my current plan, anyway. I'm going to laugh if I write an entire novel by next Friday.
I've decided I have a weird mind. Gnomes and baby reapers and poets who are afraid of the letter 'u'... Yes, I'm weird. But my mind is most definitely a fun place to live! Haha.
The picture is part of what inspired this story - these are the gnomes that live in the chicken coop.
I'm having a writing day with Ary and Nelson. It also happens to be International Talk Like a Pirate Day. If you know Ary and Nelson, you know they are dressed as pirates (Nelson even has the eyepatch) and both are using a lot of "Aye"s and "Avast!"s in normal conversation. Or they were, anyway - they've sort of left off that for the past little while.
Writing days are interesting. Very little writing actually gets done - we pretty much just sit in McClurg and play games on gsn.com. Surprisingly, I've written nearly two pages - a feat unrivaled in the history of our writing days.
Nelson just finished recording a message to his mother, in Italian, with a piratical accent. Yeah, he's weird.
Ary's reading Breaking Dawn and making a lot of random squeaks and squawks in reaction to what she's reading. This is normal.
And I... I'm thinking about baby Grim Reapers and what one should do when one finds such a thing in a graveyard on Halloween. Is that scary?
This whole writing-a-little-every-single-day thing isn't really working for me. I keep editing what I've already written and then I can't seem to move on. I mean, I have moved on, a little, but then I go back and edit everything and then write some more and edit and write and edit and write and... so on. I have nearly twenty pages, double-spaced, and I haven't even gotten to the main part of my story yet! This won't do. I have to turn it in a week from Friday... scary, scary things. I don't think it'll be done, and then Kevin will be mad at me. Maybe if I give him enough pages to play with it won't matter so much.
I imagine my inner editor looks a lot like Kevin... except evil. Like Kevin dressed up in a devil costume, cackling maniacally and jabbing the inside of my head with that pitchfork thing every time I don't get something exactly perfect before moving on. Not that he would really do that - he's actually pretty cool about helping fix problems within stories, and coming up with suggestions and all that funness. Actually, I think the closest I've seen him even come to 'evil' would be when he was irritated at us for not turning our papers in early enough that he could grade them without having to rush, and that was really more mild frustration. My imagination is just weird. For example, my conscience looks and sounds like my mom does when she's mad about something. It yells at me a lot, but it keeps me from making (most) stupid decisions.
Okay, I've wasted enough time. I should probably get back to the story.
Well, I'm home for the weekend. I was supposed to be using this time to relax and work on my story some... but of course, I'm not. No, instead I'm helping my little sister learn how to factor equations, going to eat fish at my grandmother's house, and maybe hanging out with Drew and Jacob. And packing up half my books at home to take back with me to school. Ary and I might need to invest in even more bookshelves than we already have.
I had a breakthrough with my story not too long ago... and it's getting close to 25 pages, double-spaced. It's going to be epic, this one. I'm supposed to have it done by the 26th, but I dunno how done it's going to be - maybe close to half, if I get lucky. I'm sure Kevin will understand if it's not done and I'm still turning in like 60 pages, lol. Yay novels! Or what might be a novel - I'm not sure.
So I'm pretty sure my dad thinks I'm crazy. Here was our phone conversation of just a couple minutes ago.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Daddy. Do we have any morbid family secrets you haven't told me about yet?"
"...What?"
Yeah. He thinks I'm crazy. But that's okay, because I kind of am. The main reason I asked that question is because I need some family history for a story... and I can't seem to come up with any out of my head. I'll get there eventually, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask Daddy, as he's done the whole genealogy thing. Unfortunately, it seems we don't have any really interesting stuff. Hmm.
I had an idea!! I love the feeling I get when I come up with an idea for a story. It's like discovering a hundred-dollar bill in the pocket of an old coat, or finding chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in the freezer when all you thought you had was vanilla, or maybe even winning the lottery, though I've never done that. It's a great feeling.
Now I sit in the library and type away furiously. It's not going to be one of my huge eight-hour writing stretches... I don't have the time to do that today. So I will work as long as I can, and then come back again tomorrow and write more, and again the next day, and so on until it's finished. I've never written this way before - all the stories I've ever finished have been completely written in one day. I'm a little worried that this will disrupt the flow of the story, but maybe it won't. Maybe it'll work. It has to work, right?
I hate writing.
Okay, no, I don't hate writing. But sometimes I dislike it very much. You see, I have this 'process' that I have to go through in order to complete a story. I sit around for days, sometimes weeks, trying to come up with an idea for a story. I go through countless pages of Word documents and loose leaf paper, freewriting, complaining to myself about how stupid the creation of a story is, how pointless and useless and worthless my writing is, so on and so forth. And somewhere in that period of time, an idea comes to me that actually sticks for more than a few minutes. I head to the library and get into an eight- or nine-hour writing frenzy, in which I go through my entire "Epic Writing Mix" (composed of various movie soundtracks like 300 or Pan's Labyrinth, plus some of my favorite classical pieces). I find that this type of music is wonderful to write to - no words to distract me, and the music itself is sufficiently...well... epic to give me momentum and keep me writing for a while. The entire playlist is about seven hours long. Hopefully, once I come out of my soundtrack-and-Stirling's-smoothie-induced haze, I'll have created a rough draft of a story. Then I get to edit... joy... and out of that comes a story that, hopefully, is worth something.
Unfortunately, today is one of those days in the first part of the process - the self-loathing, hatred-of-everything part of the process. So I get to sit and stare out the window, hoping maybe some monumental idea will come crashing through the glass yelling "TA-DAAA!!"
