Losing Things

So I haven't posted anything for the past few weeks, since my life at school has gotten really... unfortunately weird. A few weeks ago my roommate and closest friend on campus decided to leave school for mental health reasons. She was my companion in this adventure and her absence has been really hard to get used to, especially since we had no warning of this decision, and only two days afterward to pack up the room and say goodbye.

To make matters even more ridiculously hard I was just diagnosed with mononucleosis the other day. Basically this means that everyone expects me to be pretty much bedridden for a while, and I'm really really tired and feel like something is rotting inside me.

But this experience made me think of something I don't think I've treated very well in writing. Loss, especially of another person or relationship, can be a debilitating thing to go through. In Elle's journey she goes through multiple kinds of loss, be it losing her old life outside of the castle and her friends, losing her reputation, and even the death of a friend.

Everyone deals with loss differently; whether it be immersing themselves in work and being productive (a habit that I very much wish was mine), or lying in bed for days in sadness, or even going out of their way to avoid anything that would remind them of their loss. It's these differences and reactions to hardship, especially hardship regarding interactions with others, that show a character's inner self. A person's true character can be seen in times of hardship.

As for myself, I will be dealing with this hardship by spending a lot more time in bed with hot beverages and good bread and working on my nanowrimo attempt this year.

Happy Halloween and First of November, everyone.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

Part One Review

I'm most of the way through Part One of the manuscript now. It took me only like, a month and a half! Not really, I only got back to working on it the other day. I've had a... chaotic past couple months. But I'm back to it now!

Now that I'm home from school and safely nestled in the backwoods of New Jersey, caught up on sleep, and have more than two days to prepare for the next larping event, I actually have time. It's a nice feeling, not having finals or papers or Macbeth taking up 20 out of my 24 hours a day.

So the progress: I'm over halfway through Part One. The writing is a bit (or a lot) iffy at some parts, especially in the very beginning so I see why I got so frustrated with it on the first edit. I'm not changing much on the read-through except for miswordings and typos every once in a while. Once I do my major edits I'm planning a third edit to go through and fix the writing more, and that should smooth everything over. I've not found anything unfixable yet, so it's not a frustrating experience [yet].

My notebook is separated by chapter, and I've run into relatively few problems so far, which I'm glad of. Most of it is just tone and writing things. But then again, Part One was never the part I was worried about for logistical inconsistencies, just writing. Hopefully the rest of the manuscript will follow this kind of predictability in what needs to be fixed.

I'm going to get back to it, now! Hope you all are having a great summer so far!

Last Weeks in Kentucky

This is one of my last weeks on campus, so though Tech Week for Macbeth is now over, now I have final projects and the like to frantically complete. Basically, I don't have a whole lot of time to sleep, much less edit and otherwise function like a normal human being.

So not a lot of editing has gotten done this week- a little has, but only a very very little. I've read enough to realize how bad the writing is in the beginning of the manuscript- and see how bad my patch job was the first time through. But once I finish the read-through and major cut/pasting, I can go back and make the writing decent. It's not so bad that I can't read it- a little distracting, but more of an incentive to get done and go back to fix it than a soul-crushing hindrance as before.

I should stop procrastinating and get some more work done, but first I'll leave you with a couple sketches I've done this week. (sketching is a good procrastinator, funny enough)

This second one is a uniform of sorts that I thought up for the scholars of the Valley castle- I thought since they're a pretty tight community they might dress differently from others, so here's an idea for a High Wizard costume.

Working on Macbeth's costumes has influence what I'm designing in my head, and now I've been watching a bit more of Game of Thrones (my friends have gotten me hooked, and I've been watching it in between classes because I have no self control) so the costumes on that are making me geek out about gowns and things. Such a pretty show.

Getting back to work now.

Have a good night, everyone!

Slow and Steady... Right?

Gosh it's been such a crazy month. College is so weird. But I have gotten a little editing done.

Not much editing, there isn't much to report. What little I've done involved a lot of cutting pretty fluff. There was a lot of unnecessary description of dresses because I spend too much time thinking about them.

One thing I hope to accomplish is a story that's interesting to anyone, so I can't have too much girly things. It's not a very limiting thing, but as I said last post, I get a bit carried away.

Thank you all for being so patient with me, here's a sketch!

... of a dress. You see my problem? This is Elle in just a plain dress. But I like it. I haven't been drawing for myself much lately because I actually have drawing homework. It's kind of amazing. So this is the last of the sketches from my last go-through of my sketchbooks. I shall make more soon.

I'm still trying to figure out what to do for NaNoWriMo. I kind of doubt it will be possible though because college is a lot of work. But no surprises there. I might just try a collection of creepy stories. I have a few theories about hauntings I could explore. Last night I was in the art building during a pretty good rainstorm and it gave me some good ideas.

I'm Still Alive, I Swear!

Hello! Wow it's been so long, I didn't mean for this to happen!

Things have been kinda crazy with packing, moving my brother into his college, moving myself down to College (it was an eleven hour drive) and even now trying to figure out how to be a College Kid. Life now involves a lot more naps and using froyo as currency than I'd expected.

So I haven't gotten a lot of editing done. Strangely I've been really inspired to write poetry the last few weeks, so I've done some of that and we'll see if that turns into a thing.

This month is (supposedly, according to my NaNo Newsletters) officially NaNoWriMo Planning Month, so are any of you all planning anything? I really want to do it this year, as always, and since I'm not actively writing another story I might do it as a side thing. In order to lessen the load my friend and I might do a cowritten thing, which I know is cheating, so I don't know how we'd put that on the site, maybe just track our own progress so we each aim for 25k. It's not a thing you're supposed to do, I know, but it might just be best. If my friend decides she doesn't want to I might attempt it with my roommate, or even on my own but I don't know which story idea to expand on yet. I could retry my original NaNo attempt or start on the sequel to The Prophecy (since I accidentally already wrote an opening scene for it on the car ride to drop my brother off) but I don't think so. I have a list of ideas, I shall see.

I've been thinking a lot, as well. I mean I'm always thinking but it's usually about like, someone's nose or why society is dumb or that really attractive person across the room or something. This time I've been thinking about watching people die.

On the long-butt drive down to Kentucky I witnessed a car crash in which the driver in the car in front of mine went into the median and then flipped over midair, sending both driver and passenger through the windshield to hit the ground. The car ended up in the north-bound lane, and thankfully didn't hit anyone else and no one but the two in the car were injured. However I'm fairly sure I saw two people die that day, and I was the only one who got such a good view of it.

It was startling to say the least, and really hit me that I saw two people (who were unconscious from the initial impact in the ditch of the median) fall to their deaths. It was strange that as I watched it happen I thought "this looks exactly like the movies" up until I saw two bodies flop out of the car. You see the crashes in movies, but never the people who supposedly die in them. This may be because in movies everyone supposedly has their seat belts on, which would stop people from being ejected, but I think it's because however realistic these movies are they don't want to horrify the audience of an action movie. We are so used to seeing the battles, the high speed car chases and the amazing crashes and disasters portrayed in entertainment media but they never seem to show the effects.

A couple days later I saw the movie Now You See Me, which has a high-speed car chase in it and my musings held fairly true there, and that got me thinking even more, as someone who has written battle scenes into this story of mine, who has put characters through death and made others witness it, that I didn't really know what I was doing. (I mean I knew that anyway but now I know it in a different way, you know?) And we'll see how well I did once I get to those scenes in editing. But still I wonder, are books even supposed to make us feel horrified in ways movies won't? Books are already so much more personal, and take place in your head, already occupy so much more time and brainpower, is it alright to have this kind of realism?

I suppose realism from books is in part contributed by the reader and the extent of their experiences and what they can imagine. I remember being particularly horrified in certain parts of the Hunger Games at the violence, I wonder how it would effect me now that I've actually felt those things? I wonder how it would feel to a veteran?

So these are all things I've been thinking about. I know this isn't a particularly organized post.

On another note.... Have some sketches!

These are things I did last spring while on a trip to the US capitol, Washington D. C. and they're based loosely off of the Desert queen (left) and Elle (right) though really (especially for the one on the right) I was just messing around with pens and the thought of those pretty old-fashioned cameo things.

Back to actually on-topic things, I have not, in the past chaotic month, been able to do much editing. I have done some! Just nothing really of note. It's really just me being lazy and/or completely overwhelmed by everything that's going on so once I find out how to be a College Kid and get to a daily routine (which, if you play Sims- protip: get your sims on a daily routine from day one) I will actually pretend to be professional and set aside time each day.

I'm sorry for the long wait, everyone! (I mean no one really seems to read this but still, to those who do, thank you! and sorry.) I'll be back to weekly posts I think from now on.

Rock on, y'all.

Return

Hello All, feels like it's been a while, hasn't it?

Well that's my bad. And I haven't touched my manuscript in all that time, either. Shame on me. But I will reconvene to begin again this exact morning, I swear- once I post this (and then do the obligatory read-through to catch all my grammar mistakes) I will close down my internet and start once again at page fifty-two of my manuscript.

I hope I took long enough of a break for that raw spot in my brain to heal. Editing this is like scrubbing as hard as I can with sand paper at this large glob of hardened gloop I've spawned, trying to make it change shape into something recognizable. It was really wearing on me, but let's hope I can handle it this time around.

I realize now I rushed things, taking only that measly week off after finishing the draft, and I did know that at the time, but it was all in vain since there was no way I could've gotten through editing by graduation.

I have almost the entire summer left now... I will put it to good use, though I resolve to take it slow and steady this time around. No pressure.

HOWEVER: I do want to participate in NaNoWriMo this fall. So if I could have it done by then... Haha, stop it Leigh.

On that note- July is apparently another Camp NaNoWriMo month, sorry I should have posted as soon as I found out (the day before, as always) but.... I didn't.

I want to do the November run though, like a lot. I can't wait to go to College and everything, and I would be participating along with both new and old classmates, so I feel like it would be a great experience.

I chose my classes for fall term yesterday. It's so real. I'll be taking a Humanities/Writing course, Differential Calculus With Review (blaarcgh kill me), Spanish, and Introduction to Drawing. I CANNOT wait. I think I know who will be teaching the drawing class and I already met him, so I'm that much more excited. "Introduction" to Drawing though, is a funny name. Drawing and I, WE'VE MET.

So there's the rundown on what's going on with what. Not posting Editing concerns this time because they haven't changed since I've been doing nothing.

P.S. I've just now gone back and looked at one of my favorite blogs re{d}ress or http://reddressredress.blogspot.com/ and reread her own post about editing troubles. She's making a film, and it's comforting to know even she has some of my same problems, albeit in a different way.

An End

I've been finding it hard to concentrate on editing as my high school tenure comes to an end. Not just the schoolwork that is again being thrown at me last minute, but this whole transition into being a graduate. I'm already preparing for college in the fall, getting things for my dorm room, choosing my roommate (hey M!) and I have to take placement tests this week... It's a lot.

Editing is still going very very slowly, though I did do some this weekend. I hope my workload for the next weeks will be lighter and I can get more sleep as well. It's not helped that when I do sit down to edit I get quickly discouraged, as I'm finding the writing to be pretty crappy and it's frustrating and hard to get through.

Back to work!


Problems I'm Thinking About:
-chapters
-general suckage
-character consistency
-what is the title going to be??
-mastering the use of dialogue

The End! Kindofsortofnotreallyyet

Good news for anyone interested in NaNoWriMo- "Camp NaNoWriMo" begins today! I'll put it up on the links list, I actually didn't know when it began until logging onto Facebook a minute ago. It's just like the November run, it seems, only for April.
Speaking of which, April is National Poetry Month. I have at least one friend participating in a Poetry Month challenge, and she'll be writing a poem every day, and I think posting it on her tumblr blog. I'll link to that as well, I guess; it's called Misused Words. I'm not much of a poet myself, but I think my English Lit teacher is planning to have our class do something.

As for my own story, I know I've said this before (kind of) but I'm almost done with my first draft. Seriously; I only have the final showdown and then the resolution, and I'm incredibly pumped. My word count is severely behind schedule, but seeing as I'm so close missing my Easter deadline wasn't that disappointing. I'm waiting until I'm actually done before setting a deadline for the edits, but I think I might shoot for my graduation this June-a deadline that is probably wishful thinking, as I know I left myself a lot of work in editing.

In other news about my personal life I just recently sent my first deposit in to my College of choice! This means, for those not "in the know" about American colleges, that the first check has been mailed and I am, upon the check's arrival to the school, officially enrolled for the coming Fall. I'm very excited as I love the school I chose and their art department is amazing. I know less about their English department, but it's a very well-known school and I doubt I'll be disappointed based on what I've seen thus far. I can't wait to be immersed in what I love- both the subjects and the process of learning. I plan on a double major in Studio Art and whatever Writing major they have (the terminology changes for each institution and I forget theirs at the moment). I've also been playing recently with the idea of minoring in History as well. We'll see, I suppose. But all this is very invigorating, and I feel that teenage sense of stagnation lifting finally.

Current Word Count: 179,654
[for now Blogger doesn't seem to be letting me add links to the list so they're http://misusedwords.tumblr.com and http://campnanowrimo.org]