Tuesday, October 12, 2010

can't believe it's that time of year again

i have a fifteen-ish page paper due in exactly five hours and thirty five minutes, complete with practical research and a comparison between two programs that i have yet to download, or even choose. i wrote slightly more than two pages yesterday morning and have three bullet points of where i want the research section to go before i get into my own investigations. i actually really like the topic i'm writing about for once, and the research is interesting-ish.

instead of buckling down to write the paper, though, i just wasted a good forty minutes or so on the nanowrimo newly-ish (yeah, i dunno what's with me and ishes today)relaunched website. because, yes, it is almost that time of year again. (can you believe it has already been an entire year since the last nanowrimo? and sincerely, mr. nobody is still sitting barely edited and mostly ignored on my desktop.) in nineteen days i will, along with tons of other people who are equally insane, be writing furiously to get out at least fifty thousand words in a month. like last year (though none of you listened), i think you should all try it. if you do, add me as a writing buddy (sarah_k). last year the days leading up to nanowrimo found me struggling to find a plot to write. this year is worse, because not only do i not really know what to write, it seems as though i have forgotten how. after shutting off my brain for the past couple of months, i'm not sure if i can get in a creative mood before november starts. i did however read something this morning which inspired one sentence to pop into my head. it's not much, but it's all i have at the moment. what do you think? can i remember how to write fast enough to write an entire novel based off of one barely coherent sentence? i'm excited to try.

i am trying to pull myself out of nanoland to work on computer forensics, but i'm already working out how i can maybe talk my way out of getting in trouble for not finishing my paper today. the paper is due the week before the midterm. next week we don't have class and the week after that is the midterm. he likes everything in hard copy so i'm smart enough to know that that means it is due today. but do you think i could pull of stupid and get away with it? say i forgot next week was classless? maybe? as long as there is a shred of hope, i just can't force myself into last-minute work mode. gah.

*That Time of Year - Sick Puppies

12 comments:

  1. anonymous hippopotamusOctober 12, 2010 at 11:47 PM

    oh yeah...how did that go? did your professor tell you you're a failure and to drop out of the masters program and never show your face in the academic world ever ever again??

    ReplyDelete
  2. For some reason, I'm just staring at this post and all of a sudden my brain is telling me that writing a 50,000-word novel in 30 days seems like a great idea. This despite the fact that I have never in my life come close to even thinking about writing a novel. I have one dumb idea in my head and nothing else, and I think I'm gonna go for it. I hate you, Sarah :P

    ReplyDelete
  3. anonymous hippopotamusOctober 13, 2010 at 2:19 PM

    i have a paragraph..lool

    ReplyDelete
  4. anonymous hippopotamus... he didn't mention it and neither did i, but i'm his favorite student anyway so it doesn't really matter. also, are you doing it again this year?

    The Flea... OMG YAAAY!! i'm sooo excited right now! i'm sure your idea is not dumb and at the end of the month i'll notice that your novel is better than my novel and i'll never talk to you again out of spiteful jealousy, but until then, YAY! and if you hate me now, just wait till november starts. *evil laugh*

    ReplyDelete
  5. anonymous hippopotamusOctober 13, 2010 at 11:34 PM

    haha possibly...although i think the outcome of this novel will probably be the same as the one from last year... :D

    ReplyDelete
  6. no. you have no school anymore so you have to write past the first day. and i mean, what better way can you spend the days leading up to having the baby in black (which is now his official name ala LOST) than writing a novel?! go on the site and look at the forums and adopt a plot and characters and a title and then you don't even have to think. just write.

    ReplyDelete
  7. anonymous hippopotamusOctober 15, 2010 at 8:17 AM

    omg.. one of the plots on the adopt a plot forum sounds sooo similar to hunger games. plagiarism! lol

    ReplyDelete
  8. anonymous hippopotamusOctober 15, 2010 at 8:19 AM

    Every fifth year in July, one hundred children ages seventeen and under are sent to a mysterious island. Some children seek the island in hopes of adventure and attempts to prove their bravery - others get lost and led to the ships that rip them from their homes - parents are mislead by educational-tour scams and some even trade their children for money. The island, small and distant and obscured by fog, stands hundreds of miles away from the shores of all civilization. It's all the suspence the rumors promised, but as the children find out over the course of three weeks, that's not all it has to offer. Soon the "suspense" becomes all too real, and they find themselves in a life or death struggle.

    The game: Hide for your lives.

    The goal: Avoid the enemies at all costs.

    Many will join, few will win.

    Just a random something I thought of a couple of years back; it doesn't have to be an island, it can be a mysterious building in a highly-populated city or something along those lines. I never decided what the purpose of the game was and why it became a life or death struggle- that's up for you to decide.

    If anyone uses it, let me know!

    -----------

    i feel like asking them what rock they have been living under to not have heard about the hunger games..

    ReplyDelete
  9. haha seriously. or they're just acting dumb. the difference, though, is that in THG you fight for life, and in this one you hide for your life. do you realize how boring it would be to read a book about a bunch of kids hiding? "...and then i ran behind a tree and sat there for a few hours. no one found me, but i decided to go and hide in a cave to sleep. i noticed someone hiding behind a boulder, but was too busy finding my own hiding place to do anything about it."

    ReplyDelete
  10. anonymous hippopotamusOctober 15, 2010 at 10:45 PM

    i think that has some potential! :P

    and i took hiding fr your lives to mean if your found your basically dead which is the same as the hunger games.. they were hiding too.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Nano?? So soon.. I haven't got a creative bone left :( I'm trying to write Shattered, but have forgotten how to :(

    ReplyDelete
  12. anonymous hippopotamus... yeah i know that's what she meant, it just sounds too passive to be used in the description of an action story.

    Hannah... maybe taking a break from Shattered to do nano is just what you need. but i completely understand the forgetting-how-to-write feeling, i was experiencing that myself recently (maybe i still am, i havent really tried writing anything since then lol.)in one of my classes a few semesters back we studied uncreative writing, where people would basically just copy down other people's stuff (but in a more creative way?). maybe you can try a mix between creative and uncreative writing and throw yourself into the middle of someone else's book and see where things go from there. it might get the creative juices flowing for Shattered. you know, if you want to of course.

    ReplyDelete