What's Up Wednesday (19)

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme geared toward readers and writers, so we can check in with each other. To join, just check out Jaime Morrow or Erin Funk's blogs for the link widget and sign up!


WHAT I'M READING

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS. I know, I know! It's taking me forever, and it's not because the book isn't good. It is! I'm quite enjoying it, but it is also NaNoWriMo and I have ALL THE MOVIES and ALL THE BIRTHDAYS to attend to as well. I'm nearly there though!

Plus, it's getting to that time in the year when I start reading picture books in an attempt to catch up to my yearly reading goal. I'm currently 5 books behind. :(

I'm also re-reading HAMLET, which of all the Shakespearean plays I've read (which admittedly is not that many), it is my favorite. I think I like it even better now. It's so beautiful and DRAMATIC. Hamlet, you melodramatic diva, I love you. Though I could do with a little less misogyny. :P


WHAT I'M WRITING

NaNo story and it is SLOW GOING. I am no less excited about the idea, but obviously getting the idea to look anything like it's supposed to is frustrating. I know it's about quantity and not quality, but oh it pains me. Also, I'm just a slow writer. The sprints thing, it just makes me nervous - in the bad, overly tense way. But the good thing is I am at least writing EVERY DAY*, so yay for forming good habits.

The Lokis are my writing partners. Mostly, they judge my sad word count.

WHAT INSPIRES ME RIGHT NOW

Everyone else's amazing word counts and all the energy and encouragement I see every day on Twitter from the community. I also had a very fun group texting session with Lola and Sarah this weekend that was inspiring in its own way. I mostly talked about taking Loki to the vet, haha, but Lola and Sarah had good writerly conversation!


WHAT ELSE I'VE BEEN UP TO

As I mentioned above, we took Loki to the vet, but it's nothing serious! He just needed his yearly shots and it turns out he has allergies that make his ears itchy. So we have allergy meds for that.

We also got him a hat for no reason other than that it's cute. He didn't like it.

Like his namesake, Loki is good at making annoyed faces.

Aaaand we saw THOR: THE DARK WORLD and loved it! I'm actually not sure if I liked it more than the first (I know, weird opinion - but I thought there was more weight to some of the emotional character moments in the first), but it was a lot of fun and funny. As with the first movie, I appreciated having the Female Gaze represented in the movie rather than the usual Male Gaze.

And speaking to that, during the quiet scene where Thor is shirtless, this lady in the audience said into the silence "Wow." It was especially perfect because you could tell it wasn't done on purpose to be funny or obnoxious. It sounded like she just couldn't contain herself. Priceless.

For the occasion, the Sister and I wore appropriate attire.


[And yes, that is what my hair looks like now with all the pink & red faded out. It's a nice ombre, and I haven't even done anything to it since July!]

It goes without saying, NOT ENOUGH LOKI. He was fantastic and when he was having fun, so were the rest of us.

I mean, the Sister wrote up 10 Reasons why THOR: THE DARK WORLD is really THE LOKI SHOW.

And thanks to the Loki Show, more people are discovering the utter talent and delight that is Tom Hiddleston. Oh darlings, let me welcome you to the party. ;)

Lastly, if you guys are willing, please vote for our puppy Loki in this pet photo contest! Here's the info

Directions: Enjoy the slideshow (linked below) and then send us an e-mail at templecityanimalhospital [at] gmail [dot] com telling us which pet you're voting for. Please put "Contest" in the Subject Line, and please include "Loki says 'Hi'."

Furry Friend photo slide show

Thanks friends! What's up with you?

*Every day...if you don't count that I miss a day here and there. Like I missed writing to see Thor.

Wordless Wednesday: Sleeeeepy

Happy Wednesday!  We bring to you puppy naptime:

ZZzZZzzZzzzz...

Also, wink-wink:

This is from back in February when she was still a youthfully slim ratty.

In other news, Krispy and I and our fellow cabinmates have been writing away!  Krispy needs to write more though.  I've threatened to throw her into a lake of rabid pirahna if she doesn't get some more wordcount under her belt.

What threats/treats/motivations do you use to keep yourself writing when the going gets tough?

Camp Nanowrimo: August 2012!

Hello, hello!  Today is a short post merely to say WRITE MORE, KRISPY, COME ON, DO IT, because August 1 is the first day of Camp Nanowrimo for Krispy and me!

This time around, we are sharing a writerly cabin with a stupendous set of ladies, none other than:

The Jazzy Julie Dao
The Sophisticated Sophia the Writer
The Lovely Lady Linda
The Excellent Emy Shin

What will the future bring?  Blood, sweat, and tears, world-building and world-crushing and world-domination.  Also, Alz bullying Krispy, but this is nothing new.

Are you participating in Camp Nano?


P.S. Our unofficial Camp Counselor Sophia has a post up about all the fierce ladies of our Camp NaNo cabin! Check it out: Tiger Tea Tent debuts at Camp NaNoWriMo!

Randomosity on Fridays: Camping Edition

Can someone please slow time down a little? I feel like we've been blasting through summer ever since Memorial Day. I can't believe we're already halfway through July, eep!

So anyway, as you may or may not know, Alz and I are kind of NaNoWriMo addicts, but November is a notoriously bad month for me in terms of having time for writing. It's Thanksgiving, gearing up for end of the year holidays, and a bunch of people's birthdays. It used to be worse during college because November was also midterm season.

Lucky for us, the NaNoWriMo peeps started Camp NaNoWriMo for summer noveling, and like we did last year, we will be participating. Woohoo!

This is probably the only camping either of us will ever do because we both hate bugs and like hot showers.

BUT since it is summer and the time of camping and summer camps and such, I thought I'd thought I'd ask you about YOUR camp experiences. I've never gone on camping trips, but I did go to a week-long Marine Biology Camp in 6th grade and a week-long Astro Camp in 8th grade.

Both were very fun, but we stayed in dorms and had hot food and water. Marine Biology Camp was tons of outdoorsy fun - snorkeling, kayaking, hikes, beach days + learning (of course). Astro Camp was also pretty fun, but I think there was more learning involved. I just remember climbing a tree obstacle course thing and building something out of PVC pipes underwater in a pool. Oh and I'm pretty sure our chaperone hated us. :P

So Q4U: What are your feelings on camping? Have you been camping / to a summer camp?

End (Halloween) & Begin (NaNo 2011)

Double trouble post! We're covering HALLOWEEN and NANOWRIMO! Halloween is all pictures, so I'm going to skip to NaNo first.

I actually did my NaNo attempt in August under Camp NaNo, but thanks to that Third Campaigner Challenge prompt, my brain started ticking. But I have no plot! No outline! No apparent direction!

But I'm doing it anyway. Alz and other people (you know who you are *cough* Lori *cough* ChristineF *cough*) talked me into it. I decided yesterday night while I was hiding from Trick-or-Treaters in the dark. Har.

TL;DR: We're doing NaNo this year! I'm kangaru and Alz is shizalent. Friend us if you will & shame us into writing!

Now, Halloween! Mostly pictures. Hope you enjoy!

Surprise Party for friend's bday

Sister's 1st pumpkin carving: R2-D2!

Halloween Weekend

Sis was Doctor Who & Alz was the TARDIS

Sis actually owns these clothes.

Alz made that TARDIS hoodie.

I was a snake or rather The Serpent. Fancy an apple?

Scales could've been better with more time & prep.

Halloween Day

We had a Halloween potluck at work. Guess who I dressed up as? :D

Here are a few clues. Hint: Alz wrote at length about this.

Yep, I was a FAIRY or more specifically, LAUREL! (You can't tell in the photo so much, but the entire bottom half of my dress is covered in blue flowers.)

I only eat fruit & drink Sprite!

Q4U: What were you this Halloween? OR What are you writing about for NaNo / doing instead of NaNo? (Nanowrimos, let us know your usernames & we'll buddy up!)

Wordless Wednesday...not really.



This Wednesday post brought to you by Krispy nanoing furiously with Alz as her Taskmaster. Also, I doodled this entirely on my touchpad because I didn't have my pen tablet with me am a BAMF. Also again, that is indeed Krispy, as I have always drawn her, because that's what she REALLY looks like, despite what you may otherwise think based on mere photographic evidence.

I asked Krispy just now if she has anything to add.  She says, "I'm dying."  This because of actually writing nano and not because I have full-body-tackled her for failing to write.

NON-Randomosity on Fridays: Nano Update

Hello, hello, from Krispy and Alz!  Today we bring you a break from our normal Friday randomosity because we're both nanoing and should be nanoing right now except we're drafting this post reeeeal fast so that we'll keep to our regularly scheduled programming.

KRISPY: Beginnings are a sticking point for me. It's not the blank page that freaks me out; it's all the work that the beginning is supposed to do. Even then, I'm not so much worried about the hook as I am about setting the right tone. Trust me, I've gone off on things totally wrong because my beginning didn't set the right tone for the rest of it.

Basically, what I'm saying is it's been slow going. This NaNo, despite being more planned out than any other NaNo I've done, has been the hardest to start. However, word sprints are surprisingly helpful! They kind of stress me out more than I'd like, but it does force me to focus more and not get distracted by Tumblr every 2 sentences. I have Ani at Anime's Musings to thank for being my sprint partner these last two nights!

ALZ: I'm slightly less of a Wort Ungeheuer (word monster) this year because I wasn't planning on participating in Camp Nano, so my results are even less pretty than usual.  And usual means abysmal.  I've been having writing parties with Krispy that are the literary equivalent of frat parties with extra crack, only there's no actual drug or alcohol abuse and it's actually very quiet and all right, that was a crappy simile. This should give you an inkling of what my nanoing has been like.

All in all, our writing parties start with us inhaling a large amount of boba and/or frozen yogurt, complaining about not knowing things in our story, and then writing.

Q4U: How's your writing / NaNo-ing going?


P.S. By the way, for those of you who are good at identifying dialogue from movies, you should check out Ani's Dialogue/ Road-to-100 Followers Contest! It's fun, and you could win a $10 gift card for iTunes or Amazon!

Writing Wednesday: Camp NaNoWriMo

Short post for you today since I totally did NOT time manage myself well.

So after lots of peer pressure from Alz and Sophia, and then after I accidentally peer pressured Linda into doing it, I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo!

You see, I've always thought November was a bad month for me in terms of number of outside commitments and time versus novel writing. So summer is actually a much better time for me. I just wish there had been a bit more planning involved on my part. On the other hand, I've always found myself jumping into NaNo all willy-nilly. So here we are.

The bright side is I'm starting work on a story that I've been mulling over since like January. So it's pretty exciting.

My fellow blogger participants are Alz, Sophia, and Linda. Hopefully, we can get in a cabin together. My username is kangaru, and I've linked all our NaNo profiles for anyone who wants to give us a hard time for not writing enough (or you know, encouragement is nice). ;)

So anyway, if the blog posts are strangely lacking and/or short this month, you now know why. That and I'm celebrating my Quarter-Century birthday soon & going to Disneyland like every other weekend. Needless to say, maybe summer isn't a better time for me for novel-writing.

Second order of business, I finally have the winner of the e-subscription to Danyelle's Fairy Godmother Dilemma! Using random.org, the winner is...

M PAX!

Congrats! I'll email you with deets on how you can start reading.

That's it for now, friends. Anyone else signing up for Camp NaNoWriMo? (We can sing songs and have s'mores!)

WiP Wednesday: NaNoWriMo Aftermath

For your mid-week reading, I present to you What I Learned From NaNoWriMo This Year. This will probably sound a lot like what I learned from NaNoWriMo last year, which begs the question, have I really learned it if I'm not applying it?


1. Semblance of a Plot Outline Helps...a lot. I'm an odd kind of pantser, friends. I don't like planning too much, and I can't really handle the outline thing (working on it!), but the thing is, I'm also one of those people who can only write blind up until a certain point. Now, this might be my Inner Editor talking, but I have to stop when every writerly instinct is telling me the myriad strands of plot lines are going to be one huge FLAMING MESS of HOPELESS TANGLED YARN if I don't figure out what the heck I'm doing.

This year, I restarted a story from scratch. So I had a better idea of plot events, which meant writing scenes with forward momentum was a lot easier than it was last year.


2. Don't Think Too Much. Thinking too much stifles me. That's why NaNo's GAG THE INNER EDITOR AND WORD VOMIT attitude helps so much because it is an explicit, consistent, and constant reminder for me to shut the Inner Editor up.

I didn't do as well with this aspect this year; I was still thinking too much about plot and scene placements. BUT I did have my moments. It didn't involve epic wordage so much as a rather pretty piece of world building.

This story-verse's version of Heaven had always consisted of just one celestial city. Now there's three.


3. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize! Lots of people have mentioned this already, but one of the biggest revelations you can get from NaNo is you get A LOT done when you prioritize your writing / writing time! This November, I almost never had big chunks of time to write, but instead of trying to wait around for chunks of time, I just cut out smaller bits of time wherever I could and dedicated it to writing.


4. SOME words are better than NO words! I didn't write a lot every day (I don't think I ever made the average words per day you'd need to finish 50,000 words in 30 days), but I did write and now I have 10,000 words more than I would've had.

Besides, I think I'm coming to the conclusion that for certain things, I'm just not the kind of person who can spew words. Wish it were so, but the extent of that for me seems to be reserved for academic paper-writing (on a deadline) and what I like to call "random crack fic" [you know, the kind where anything goes and your characters do ridiculous things like infiltrate your friend's/co-writer's/other people's story-verses, hunker down in stranger's houses, and eat everything in sight (including but not limited to the kitchen sink). The bright side is usually everything can be replaced, saved, or otherwise regurgitated in pristine shape.]


So that was my NaNoWriMo experience. I'm actually pretty proud of myself because the personal goal for this year was to have 10,000 words at least (a doubling of last year's 5000 or so), and I did just that.

(I also try to ignore the fact that Alz started NaNo a little over halfway through the month and hit 50,000 words with like 3 days to spare, but then again, she is a true Word Monster and I'm not daft enough to compare myself to that level of output. It's like how I strategically sat far away from her during AP Lit testing because I didn't want to hear the furious flipping of her pages as she churned out her essays. FAST, the Alz is.)


What did YOU take away from NaNoWriMo? Did you reach YOUR GOALS?


Now, please excuse me while I attempt to recover from the lingering bits of my cold, sleep deprivation, and general holiday related stress. I love the holidays, but man is good cheer exhausting! See you Friday!

Maniacal Monday: Let's Nano at Last!

Hello, hello! It's been approximately a very long time since last I posted anything. I have slightly more excuse than usual (Krispy is my shining bloggerstar) because I have been furiously finishing my thesis that I might earn my MFA in Creative Writing and have a beautiful piece of paper to stick on my wall and admire while I'm eating Cup o' Noodle and wearing holey socks and trying to write, as my father so fondly hopes, the next Harry Potter.

Yesterday I printed out three copies of my thesis novel at Staples and today I handed it in. Two years of grad school, two years of slave labor, two years of feedback and critique and the support of the most amazing and talented classmates and professors, and I have completed my first novel. (Well, second. Technically my first novel was my first NaNoWriMo effort, entitled The Magical Valley and the Search for Pooka, and I made no effort to make it anything other than a silly magical romp of romping magical silliness.)

Want to know what two years of grad school workshop looks like?


The neatly stacked bit at the pinnacle is one copy of my monstrous thesis, which sounds really exciting if I describe it as an pan-mythological apocalyptic urban fantasy, though when you read it it's probably not nearly as exciting.

The rest is two years' worth of workshop: say, 4 to 5 submissions per semester x 4 semesters, x 8 to 10 copies of each submission (one for each classmate and the prof to write crtique upon), x 20-30 pages per submission + 3 thesis copies x 530 pages each = a two-foot-tall stack of paper. Fortunately my writing program offered basic free printing.

It was a long hard road and a long hard haul, but ultimately quite rewarding. I like to think that I have grown as a writer.


When I earned my driver license, I titled myself Alz, Scourge of the Roads. Now I'm thinking I should add another title: Alz, Killer of Trees.

Now that the crazy is over with, I'm ready to relax by tackling NaNoWriMo. Yes, after all that summer-into-fall thesis frenzy, NaNoWriMo is my idea of relaxation. I'm not going to be writing a novel. Instead this is going to be creative playtime, to flex my writerly muscles and pursue other tones, points of view, stories, and magical zombie unicorns. You can watch my progress on my NaNo page here. I re-activated my account today after handing in my thesis and asking myself, "Alz, do you really want to try writing 50,000 words in two weeks after you just wrote a novel and have to wait a month for your pass/fail notice?"

I said to myself, "Yes, Alz. Yes I do."

WriMo Wednesday: Beginning at the Beginning

I have a confession to make: the first 800 words of my NaNoWriMo project are a prologue. I don't even know if it's a good prologue or a necessary prologue, but there it is. My muse decided You must start here, so here I have started. It also took me an entire week + a few days for me to finally get it all down, and last night, I finally started Chapter 1.

The point of all this is that beginnings are hard. I sucked at writing intros for English essays and college papers. Trust. I was hard-pressed to write the rest of my paper if I didn't have an intro down first. It's why I often had really crappy intros, which I had to go back and revise later, but they needed to be there to direct the rest of my paper. You always hear about the importance of the thesis sentence. Well, it's true.

Strangely enough though, when it comes to writing fiction, I tend to have no trouble with the beginning. It's everything else that gets me. Of course, that isn't to say my beginnings are any good or that they're the right beginning, but they put me in a place to be able to write the rest. For me, my beginnings must set the stage for me and the reader; the tone has to feel right to me, and there has to be a hook for the reader. It's kind of a lot of pressure if you think about it too much. That's why it's the hardest for me to turn off my internal editor when I start. (Yes, that's probably the reason it took me a week to write 800-some words. That and being really distracted by watching True Blood. I finished Season 1!)

But now I'm on Chapter 1, and the pressure is slightly off. The prologue was all SRS BSNS, but now I'm into the fun, ridiculous stuff. Hopefully, the ball will get rolling.

Here's how it starts:

Casey knew it was going to be a bad day when she woke up to an angel leaning over her bed. She reacted by throwing her alarm clock at his face.

----

Endings are hard too (I also hated writing conclusions), but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

Do you find it hard to start too? How do you know if you're beginning at the right beginning? Who else is very, very behind in NaNo wordage? Do you think we still have a chance?!

DOs and DON'Ts of NaNoWriMo

As promised, lovelies, here is the NaNoWriMo post. Most of you know what it is, but here's a friendly reminder in a nutshell. The month of November is National Novel Writing Month, "30 days of literary abandon" where nothing matters except WORD COUNT. That's right, quantity over quality. You hit 50,000 words and you win.

I'll be doing it this year, and if you are too, I'd love to be your buddy since we are clearly crazy people together. Just click my participant badge on the side there. I'm kangaru.

Anyway, here are my and Alz's tips for staying chic in the midst of NaNo madness.

DOs and DON'Ts of NaNoWriMo

DO bring a butt-kicking attitude. As they say, confidence can do wonders for your looks and books. Work it!

DON'T delete!!! Remember what we said about confidence? Yeah well, confident people don't worry about suckage, and I did mention this is about QUANTITY, right?

DO let yourself suck. Yes, we're giving you permission. We're even ENCOURAGING it if it means you up your word count. And yes, you will suck, but that's the beauty of being human. (Unless, of course, you're like the novel-writing equivalent of Mozart, in which case, don't talk to me.)

DON'T freak out too much about plot points. You can fix them later (just make a note somewhere for yourself). Unlike zits, they are not red and prominently displayed on your face.

DO have some kind of plan before you start though. Fortune may favor the bold, but it helps to know where you're going.

DON'T think sleep is more important than writing. I know, you need your beauty sleep, but hey, the whole sleep-deprived vampire look is IN.

DO keep your caffeine and candy/snacks stores well stocked. No on likes a grumpy writer, and hungry writers are grumpy writers.

DON'T procrastinate. You let one day slip by without writing, and it turns into two, then three. Before you know it, you are on a one way trip to FREAKOUT Land when the last week of November rolls around and all the people you've told ask you, "So how's that novel coming?" and you've only got 100 words written, and no, your name and the title don't count. Trust, you CANNOT write 10,000 words a day for 5 days and hope for it to have any semblance of being a novel. ROME WAS NOT BUILT IN A DAY.

DO kill characters when things get boring. Seriously. Do it. Alz does it every time she gets bored with a scene. Besides, it'll show those uncooperative people who really holds the power here. Mwahahaha!

Alternatively, you could also just blow something up. If anything, it will at least make you feel better.

DON'T forget to save and back-up your file. It's like always keeping some gloss and powder in your bag for touch-ups. Or you know, having a back-up printer the night before a paper is due because yours will inevitably jam while you're trying to print it.

DO congratulate yourself for whatever you manage to write. It's awesome. You're awesome. We're all awesome. Just don't try to sell it.


SO, you all ready for this?! Do you have DOs and DON'Ts for this month of madness? Please share!

Now, I'm off to be pre-occupied with Halloween! See you Friday!

Teaser Thursday

Talk of NaNoWriMo is popping up everywhere lately. This post was going to be about that very topic, but I'm switching it up with a Teaser THURSDAY. I'm also tired and my brain is too preoccupied for writing an actual NaNoWriMo post.

So despite my distraction, I've been working on that new short (it's not very horror-ish) and finally making good use of my moleskine notebook. It was within those sporadically used pages that I found a snippet of a poem or something that I scribbled last year. If I recall correctly, I think it has something to do with the in-universe folklore of my NaNo project from last year.

So for your viewing pleasure, some lines:


She sits upon her sliver of moon,
tossing comets that trail...
Golden dust
from her hands.

Hoping to catch celestial fish,
she casts these
Glittering lines and
in the dark
It rains stars.


Have you found any interesting snippets lately? What random side things do you do to world-build? Can you rec me some good poetry?

See you lovely peeps on Friday for Randomosity. Stay warm and dry (it's cold and rainy here)!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I couldn't think of anything clever for the title, so I went with straight forward. Haha. I'm pretty full to bursting right now, so I'm going to make this short and sweet.

I can't believe this is the last full week of November. OMG. Alz validated her word count for NaNo yesterday and posted below. I'm still trucking along very slowly. I'll be lucky if I get anywhere near my word count from last year, but I'm kind of not freaking out because this year's NaNo had its own unique challenges. What I mean is, last year was my first year after graduating from Berkeley. I was job-hunting and tutoring once a week, but other than that, I had a lot of time on my hands. Getting into the NaNo thing was easier because of more time, and I kind of didn't have an excuse to NOT attempt writing a novel. Haha. This year, I started working full time pretty much right as NaNoWriMo kicked off.

It's not really an excuse, but for anyone who has never worked full-time before/commuted to work/school, it's frelling tiring that first week or two. Combined with the amped up social schedule of November, uh, let's just say it is a challenge for me every day to find time and energy to write. Oh and did I mention my parents decided to fix-up the house suddenly THIS MONTH. Um, yeah. Also, I just write very slowly. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. Getting 500 words per day out of me is an accomplishment, unless we're talking academic paper and deadline. So since the end is nigh, my brain might kick into gear! Yay!

In any case, I still think NaNo's awesome, and I'm very very thankful for my job. It was kind of rough not having something tangible to do after the awesomeness of being graduated wore off.

I'm also thankful for my family, my amazing, amazing friends who seem to become more awesome every year, and of course, for all of the awesome people I've met online through blogging and writing. You guys are great. And I'm using the word awesome a lot, but it's an awesome word and I'm from California, so it's ingrained in my every day language and I really can't help it.

So I hope all of you who celebrate Thanksgiving eat up! This is the day when pigging out to your heart's (or stomach's) content is totally approved! For those of you who don't celebrate this, you should eat up anyway. Food is awesome.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

The End Draweth Nigh

'Tis November 25th--but five more days left of the glorious endeavor known as NaNoWriMo. Today the NaNo site activated the official wordcount verifier, so I verified my wordcount and collected my shiny new reward graphic, which doth looketh thus:


I will admit that once I did hit 50,000, the urge, the haste, the pressure petered off some, and as a result, I wrote less. I did make an effort to write everyday, but some days I barely wrote at all. I entertained myself by instead nagging Krispy every night to write more, and everyday to write more, and every twilight to write more. I have not seen New Moon, but I may very well let my curiosity get the better of me and actually pay $6 for a before-noon showing. But no more than $6, my friends, and even then but grudgingly.

But back to writing--my NaNo novel this year is perhaps the greatest mess and in general the worst NaNo novel I've ever written. It's slow, and goes nowhere fast, and features a lot of walking and talking and sitting around and talking, and very little gets accomplished. But for all that, it was fun to write, and is still fun to write, for it is nowhere near done. Of course, that could be said of most of my writing projects.

Krispy, on the other hand, gave me a tantalizing taste of her story the other night (or was it last night?) and I must say this: I just churn out the wordage without care for anything such as style, lyricalness, or sense. From the couple of paragraphs I've read of Krispy's story, though, it is marvelous and far more beautifully written, and sounds like a real story with intent and purpose instead of an excuse to write about magical ninjas glomming onto a most reluctant knight.

I only wish she'd give me more. And write more. And faster. And these desires holds true year-round, not just for November. Write, Krispy, write! There is still time! The future is not yet decided! At dawn, look to the east!

Also, when I'm not writing or living life, I do other fairly useless things a lot. I therefore created a blog to document the creative results of my frequent bouts of procrastination, mostly involving shiny things, which I've named Sparkling Rampage because I thought it was a cool name and which I totally didn't steal at all from Legend of Mana's 2-handed axe technique of the same name.

Middling the Week

'Sup peeps. So I obviously calmed myself down and took a step back from blogging every time I looked at the calendar, looked at my word count, and started freaking out. I think bi-weekly is a good pace for this blog, especially considering we're going from once a month to twice a week in November. Trust me though, I've been holding back.

It is now Wednesday, November 18, more than halfway through the month. To tell you the truth, I thought things would calm the eff down by now, mostly because the many birthdays are over (omg, I just remembered one more right now...must text her...). As usual, I was wrong. I think this will be one of my NaNo lessons for this year:

TIME IS NOT ON YOUR SIDE.

On the other hand, it's been a happenin' November, full of pleasant surprises. Yesterday, for example, I squeezed in a mere 100 words or so, but it was totally okay because I had tickets to a free secret concert. My sister apparently has amazing Twitter and email skillz0rs and scored tickets to OK Go's secret show last night in LA. It was at the Grammy Museum at LA Live, and it was being filmed for Last Call with Carson Daly. Sadly this meant no pictures, but the show was AWESOME. Small crowd, small room, and pretty much a full concert set (and FREE). They said it'd only be 45 min, but it felt longer. New songs, old songs, random hilarity. Oh man, I had no idea they were so good live. The one downside was parking at LA Live.

Um, I had no idea parking there was $25. Yes. $25. Seriously had a ridic moment with the parking attendant when she said, "It'll be 25," and I stared at her and said, "Dollars???"

What does this have to do with writing? Nothing, to be honest, except that NaNo is all well and good, but so is your social life sometimes. Yes, it's November. Yes, this is possibly the only month in the year you set aside exclusively for mad writing with the excuse that thousands and thousands of people are dedicating themselves to the same crazy dream. But, sometimes life also hands you a pair of free concert tickets, and you really just need to take them. Really.

Now, time to distract the Inner Editor and get back to NaNo-ing.

(But I'm still really boggled by parking costing 25-freaking-dollars.)

(P.S. In case you missed it, Alz has been done with NaNo word count-wise for like a week now. That boggles my mind as well and I should be used to this!)

P.P.S. I almost forgot to share this random but fun name generator thing. Make Me Mighty. This one's mine: Princess Krispyhawk, the Firemaster: Judge, Jury and Executioner, Impeacher of Immutable Souls.

Krispy is forcing me to write this post.

Krispy said that if I didn't post about it, she would, and she said it in that very Krispy-ish, venemous, menacing tone of voice that makes absolutely everything sound like a threat, even something as innocuous as, say, "Let's go get frozen yogurt." When you say it that way, it sounds like you're threatening murder.

I hit 50,000 words today--however, let it be said that my NaNo is a mess of inaction, and what little action there is is mostly walking around and talking, and the story is so ill-paced that it does not limp along as much as it does stagger in drunken circles before falling to the ground and spasming. I do not believe I've ever written such a long story in which so very little happens.

Also, with regards to editing, I have done none. For NaNoWriMo I make it a policy never to edit, revise, or delete anything, and because of this there are many instances where sentences just don't make sense or metaphors peter out before actually flowering out into a full image. It is an embarrassment of a plethora of mistakes and loose ends and unexplained developments and undeveloped tangents. Let's face it: my NaNo story this year is a total mess.

But that, my friends, is that crazy, cathartic joy of it. Writing without care for editing or sensibility, without worry of review or critique, without concerns for publication possibilities and potential. Writing just to write, and surprising yourself with an occasional amazing tidbit here, a striking image there, a poetic phrase here, a dramatic moment there. Ah! Every NaNo has its moments. Some more than others. This one in particular, not so many, but still--some.

Reaching 50,000 in 12 days is a new record for me, and as boggling to me as it is to everyone else. I don't know how I did it. I don't know if I'll ever be able to do it again. As Krispy noted previously, reaching 10,000 in one day was also a new record--though as I've told her and shall now tell everyone else, I had literally nothing else to do that day but sit and write, still fired-up and rip-roarin'-ready to go, plus it was daylight savings so I had an extra hour. And I really did literally spend most of the day writing. So it is possible, and unfortunately now that I've done it, I'm going to have that dreaded realization dangling over my head all the time now, singing that seductive siren-song, ♪ It's possible...so why aren't you doing it?~♪♫

Krispy has been writing, slowly but surely, and I await in anticipation the first glimpse I'll have of her story. NaNoWriMo is about deadlines and pressure, about pushing yourself to write more than you normally would, and so I'm grateful for any writing this month manages to squeeze out of Krispy--because I love her writing so and it is my iron-clad belief that she should always write more, more, more, and give it all to me, because I am a whore for her writing and unashamedly so, right down to my literary core. See, Krispy? You even drive me to poorly-rhymed randomness. I expect you to be NaNo-ing right now, even as I write this.
Write more, Krispy! Write more! Crank up that wordcount and go for the gold! There will be ice cream at the finish line--or maybe boba. ♥♥♥

November is a bastard or Week 1 of NaNoWriMo

So last night, Alz, Luce, and I got together and completed a massive art project. You think I exaggerate, but this was an art project the likes of which have not been seen since our days in elementary school when some of my classmates were eating glue (I kid you not). We had markers of different colors and sizes, colored construction paper, scissors and glue! What were we doing? We were decorating a large cardboard box for our friend's belated birthday present. The completed project was pretty amazing. Alz has pictures.

The point being, I ended up NaNo-ing like 100 words maybe after we finished that and I went home. That's not bad since some word count is better than NO word count, but uh, I'm almost 16,000 words behind. Ahah ha.

I'm not freaking out (okay, I'm kind of freaking out) because I knew November's a bad month for me. It's the holiday lead-in month, and on top of that, for some reason, I like making friends with people whose birthdays are in November. It means my Social Life in Real Life suddenly goes up a few notches, and not only am I using all my creative juices on trying to figure out what presents to buy (and apparently how to wrap them), but I'm also going for broke (no really...How much do I owe you again, Alz?).

So really, any amount of wordage I manage alleviates my guilty conscience. I'm going to truck along, despite November's attempts at derailing me. And I know he's trying to because he's a shady bastard - my character November, but the month too. The amount of words I need to get on track is daunting, but it is not insurmountable! If all else fails, I'm going to write gibberish or maybe I'll just let November run amok and do his worst if that'll get him to be nicer to me.

Also, I've decided to completely numb myself to Alz's word count. She's at 40,563 words. Um, yes. Word Monster, that is what you are Alz, stop denying it.

There's a guest post at Icy Roses' blog about word count freak-outs that I found heartening. See it at From Elysium. But I pose the question, what if freaking out is part of the fun? Oooor maybe it's only if you're slightly masochistic (like I apparently might be) or in denial (which I probably am).

Oh! I experienced my first mini-write-in and word race this past weekend! It was a private party - just me, Luce, and Alz - but it was effective. Mostly. I mean, Luce and I were right about Alz's click-clacking on the keyboard being kind of distracting, not to mention stress-inducing and a reminder of AP Exam days. But we got over it after Luce and I decided to race each other to 100 words (baby steps!). I won that round, but she won the 500 words round. I discovered that intense competition actually makes me crumble under pressure (like my college football team seems to do after they get my hopes up for Pac-10 glory). The first race wasn't that intense, so I did okay. The second one was more competitive and that just tensed me up too much. There are psychological studies that show people do more poorly on certain tasks when they think they're being watched/judged - basically when they're made to feel self-conscious. This is one of many common-sense-like gems I learned from 4 years of study on the subject of the human psyche.

Uh, Clash of the Titans teaser trailer. Looks pretty EPIC (or possibly awful but still EPIC). Hahahaha.

(Excuse the randomness and rife use of parenthetical phrases in this post. I haven't been getting enough sleep between work/commuting, NaNo, social life, and trying not to break my face in the mornings when I get up and have to navigate through the piles and boxes of stuff piled around my room because the family decided it was a good month to do major housework/cleaning. Oh November.)

NaNoWriMo Day 4 & Things that really Interest Krispy

Um, so it's Day 4 of Nano, and I am officially 6668 words behind. Yes folks. My word count is still nonexistent, but look at me blog! Procrastination does weird things to me. In any case, I am feeling intensely guilty & I'm way behind on my TV show-watching schedule (which I'll admit is gratuitous), but I'm sacrificing my shows (some of them anyway) for Nano! I just have to get to the writing part.

Unfortunately, November hates me. I usually don't have much of a social life, but November always manages to side-swipe me with events. What's up with that? I thought I'd be okay once I graduated since that put an end to the dreaded Midterm Season, but I was wrong. Score: Krispy - 0, Universe - 100000000+ Also, don't name your characters after months that are dreadful to you because they inevitably will turn out shady.

So speaking of distractions, my sister made me aware of a remake of the movie Clash of the Titans. I vaguely remember seeing the original on TV (at least snippets of it), and anyway, I love Greek mythology like maybe I should've been a Classics Major LOVE it, so I'm KIND OF EXCITED. I mean, this could be a potentially bad idea. Like the movie Troy sorta killed parts of my soul, but I did enjoy select parts of it, and I kind of have a love-hate relationship with Disney's Hercules (okay, but really I love Disney, so more love than hate).

But then my sister showed me this post at ohnotheydidnt, and the movie posters are PRETTY AMAZING. Also, RALPH FIENNES is playing Hades. That's He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named VOLDEMORT as Hades, and um, Liam Neeson is Zeus. LIAM NEESON. Granted, Liam Neeson is sort of already a god-figure in Narnia, but he's freaking ZEUS. Ralph Fiennes. Liam Neeson. EPIC!

Okay, I think I'm working myself up too much. Speaking of great posters, have you seen the movie posters for The Lightning Thief yet? It's pretty awesome.

And while I'm on the topic of things I'm in to, check out Racebending.com, a website about the controversy surrounding the live-action movie of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I've actually never watched this show, though I've seen it on TV and heard good things about it, but the issues brought about by the casting for this movie interests me. Plus, the world of the Last Airbender is really cool in that it's a "fantastical Asian world," which is what I'm going for in my Nano and what I kind of want to see more of in general. I can only hope I pull it off with some skill.

So to tie all of that back to writing, find things you're passionate about and write about them. Greek mythology has influenced a lot of my reading and writing; there are a lot of themes and stories there that I draw from. I mean, the myths never get old for me. I can read them again and again. The whole Avatar thing made me consider, among many other things, the richness of Asian folklore and culture and how under-tapped it seems to be. Well, I'm finally going to try to draw more inspiration from my heritage. I'm just not sure NaNoWriMo was the best time to attempt such a challenging undertaking.

I did mention that I'm 6668 words behind right?

P.S. The only picture of me in my other costume: Hogwarts student! My Sirius Black from a few years ago was better. (Also, my actual costume, the Alice in Wonderland, still blows this one out of the water. C'mon! I had a Monty Python killer White Rabbit!)

NaNoWriMo has commenced!

And I'm already behind! My word count as of right now is a grand total of 0. I blame this on having maybe a little too much fun on Halloween, major house cleaning on Nov. 1, and beginning of the month work madness today.

Oh and you know how I said I was going to outline? Um, that DIDN'T HAPPEN. So far, I think only 3 people have names in my NaNo, and one of them has 2 names. I DON'T KNOW HOW THAT HAPPENED, but it did. It's okay though because I think I have a better idea of the plot this year than I did last year, and I've always kept everything trapped in my head anyway (ask Alz; I tell her nothing).

Speaking of Alz, the Word Ungeheuer and Mind-Boggling OVERACHIEVER, do you know what that woman's writerly output was on the first day of NaNo? You ready for this? 10,515. Yes, that's 1000 words TEN TIMES, plus 500. I kid you not. I don't know how she does this, and frankly, I gave up trying to figure it out a long time ago like back in high school when I refused to sit anywhere near her during Advanced Placement testing in order to avoid hearing her page-flips as she blazed out those essay answers.

Anyway, I ought to go write now before I get even more behind. But it's okay guys. That's just how I roll. Apparently, I masochistically like having dead-heat races to the finish with deadlines.

My friend, who I badgered, coaxed, and begged into doing Nano is signed up. She and I sort of operate the same way with this whole starting off behind thing. Friend her and cheer her on here: Evaleva!

Oh and before these become too out-of-season, Halloween pictures since it was kind of epic, and no lie, I talked and thought about Nanowrimo while I was out being ridiculous. Also, I now have a cool new reference for settings, The Edison.


In which I found a killer White Rabbit and fell down a rabbit hole...





The Edison in Los Angeles is super cool, by the way. It used to be an electric plant, so it's still themed that way, which makes it very atmospheric. It's kind of industrial and old-fashioned and very steampunk - PERFECT for Halloween.



Indeed, I saw some steamers, including this awesome time traveler-type guy (or something?). There were cool decorations/displays (i.e. heads in glass cases) and dancers in costume, including amazing ones on stilts.

Oh and of course, no Alice in Wonderland story is complete without random meetings with these characters:



I don't know these people at all, but they pulled me in for a spontaneous photo op and it was awesome. Okay, and the kicker: my name is Alice. It was about time this happened.

That's all to my randomosity. Hope you all had fun and safe Halloweens and are being very productive writers. I'm off to name some characters!