laugh about it, shout about it

as the world turns into a crunchy-leaves-pumpkin-everything-sweaters-and-scarves-oh-look-a-skeleton whirlwind, i can't help but feel the tingling excitement of fall arriving myself. and while i love a pumpkin bagel as much as the next person and wait all year for hoodie weather to hit, i have to say that the thing i'm most excited for is that little voice in the back of my head, the itch in my fingers, that tells me that it is time to write.

i have been exhausted lately. like falling asleep at eight kind of tired. a toddler and a pregnancy will do that to you. but more than once in the past few days i have been overcome by the urge to write. the spark of something right on the very edge of my mind, that will only come into focus if i put fingers to keyboard. unfortunately, i haven't actually done much writing. you know, because of that whole exhausted-toddler-pregnancy thing i was just talking about plus about a million and three other things going on in my life right now that can all be thrown into the "oh my god why is this so stressful?" drawer. but fall means november. and november means nanowrimo. and nanowrimo means the one month a year that i allow myself to put my writing first. to ignore everything else that needs to be done and churn out a couple of thousand words a day. and i. am. ready.

i have my story premise, a sort of almost plot, a nearly complete main character and the urge to write. the urge is strong. the words are there. the inspiration is waiting. i just need the time. i can't wait. i'm even looking forward to the annoying dry spells when my story suddenly seems like the worst thing to ever hit a word processor and i'm cursing my brain for ever thinking it was worth my time and energy and i am trying to learn magic to pull words out of a hat because i certainly can't find anymore inside of me. that's how desperate i am to start writing again.

in other news, this pregnancy is almost half finished and i have honestly forgotten that i was pregnant for a good chunk of it. like, one day a few weeks ago, i was in the middle of a few really stressful things when one thing led to another and i thought "oh crap, what if i'm pregnant? i can't be pregnant right now! how will i tell my husband?! there's too much going on!" i was in the bathroom getting ready to pee on a stick when i remembered that, oh yeah, i am pregnant. i already knew that. duh.

surprisingly, all of this stuff has not been as bad on my schoolwork as i would have thought it would be. i mean, yes, okay, i didn't get anywhere near the amount of stuff done in september that i had planned to (really, nowhere close to my optimistically stupid summer me wanted), but i still feel like i have a pretty concrete idea of where i'm going. no wandering alone, lost in the woods of academia feeling for me. i may not be as passionate about this new topic as i was about previous ones, but i have to say, this feeling of knowing what i have to do and where i have to go next is actually pretty good.

the weather is cooling down. i may actually be able to finish this stupid degree which i honestly wasn't sure about last year. i have started to feel baby kicks and turns... i may be sleep deprived and stressed and stretched way too thin, but it is october. and i have the urge to write. and i think things are starting to look up again.

*Mrs. Robinson - Simon and Garfunkel

all of our plans have fallen through

i used to sit in the same spot in my apartment for days, barely moving, staring at a screen of some sort nonstop, and if a bird flew by my window i would think, "wow! a bird! just flew past my window! this must be magic! something has happened! i should blog about it! amazing!" now that is obviously an exaggeration, but at the same time, it really isn't. how many blog posts have i written that ramble on about nothing? dropped contact lenses and boring grad school lectures and lunch dates were all things that, at one point, deserved to be preserved in writing. and now... nothing. things happen and all i do is get through them and never look back. i don't like it.

one of the points that i seem to whine about repeatedly is how much i don't like the hype about new year's. i just... don't like it. it's always my birthday that feels like the fresh start for me. that deserves resolutions and looking back and a clean slate. new year's has always just been the sign that the vacation is nearly over, that projects need to be completed and work needs to be done and oh my god how did i let myself procrastinate this much? 

but maybe i need a stupid day that has been given a false sense of importance right now. maybe i need a january first to get myself back into writing.

(but, really, i may have a lot of posts about new year's and even more posts about nothing, but those are nothing compared to the number of posts i have where i declare that i am going to do something and then never do it. a lot of those declarations have to do with writing. and who am i kidding? what makes this any different? although, i would like to say here officially that despite the fact that my word count tracker didn't appear on my blog this year and i didn't blog about nano, i did write consistently every day for the month of november (better than any other year) and ended the month with over fifty thousand new words of fiction to my name, but that's neither here nor there.)

i feel like i am overusing the word "but." 

in the spirit of writing about what happens in my life, even if that "what" is nothing, my siblings minus the one living with her family halfway across the world all came to stay over at my house for christmas break (basically wednesday through this morning). we had a bunch of plans for the weekend. we were going to have fun. and then two out of three of my siblings were hit by a stomach bug (i'm guessing the same one that cricket and then my dad suffered from in the past couple of weeks) and suddenly the weekend turned into delivering gatorade and chicken noodle soup and doing laundry. the best laid plans and all of that... 

*The Way It Was - The Killers

there's another world we're living in tonight

[one] you guys, i want to live in the wizarding world of harry potter. i really do. it was so well designed and executed and just perfect in every single way. it's been a few weeks since i've been back home, and i still feel like i should just quit my life and go back. the "london" side is perfect. like, it seriously looks like a street pulled straight out of london, and then you go into diagon alley and it's like you're home. (if you, like me, have always felt more at home in fictional worlds than this real one i'm stuck in.) fire breathing dragons, people running around with wands performing spells that actually work, sipping butterbeer. i sat in the sun eating a scoop of florean fortescue's ice cream while listening to celestina warbeck perform live, and i cannot even explain how perfect that moment was. i would move to orlando in a heartbeat, get an annual pass, and spend every minute in diagon alley if it didn't mean that i had to live in florida. no offense to floridians, but the news stories that come out of that state have me noping big time. plus, too many bugs. but sigh, take me back.

[two] it's almost nanowrimo time again! i was, as is typical of me in octobers, wondering if i should even do it this year. i have a baby that wants me to spend my days building towers for him to knock down. i have a dissertation that i need to write slash start from scratch with slash cry about in the bathroom. i have a severely neglected blog that i never seem to have time to update. and yet, i think i can write a fifty thousand word novel? am i crazy? apparently. i usually have some hint of a plot idea or a character or a feeling that could be turned into something by the beginning of october. this year? nothing. at first i took that as a sign to take a break from it, but then i got on the site, looked at titles in the adoption station, and started to get the excitement in the pit of my stomach that means creativity is near. i didn't see any titles that jumped out at me and filled my head with a story, but just looking through them started to get my brain turning, and now there is a feeling starting to bubble up that i might be able to turn into something. and it feels almost as perfect as being back in diagon alley. if i could spend my days writing in a fictional world on the beach, i think i'd die of happiness.

[three] baby update! cricket is seven months now. which means that it has been over half a year since he's been around and that is just ridiculously crazy to me. he's eating solids and crawling (sort of. he does some weird version of the worm across the floor.) and sitting up and knocking down towers and jumping and just basically being not a newborn anymore. it's mindblowing to me though it really shouldn't be, this is what babies do, they grow up. but goodness this is fast, having a baby around again brought light to the fact that i know waaay too many kid songs and if i used that brain power to remember something more productive i could probably be some sort of academic genius at this point with three post-graduate degrees, a hundred published articles, and seven schools begging me to work for them. instead i just have a vague sense of guilt and frustration and a much edited outline for a new dissertation topic. oh well.

*Here With Me - The Killers

they said, "i'll bet they never make it"

i don't know about you guys, but november was a weird month for me. like both, super busy and also super unproductive. i got a lot of stuff done, but at the same time it feels like my to-do list is just as long as it was before, if not longer. sure the contents of list went from major things like buy a house, etc to buy a storage ottoman, but still. so much to do.

my house, despite the fact that i now have a couch in the living room, a crib, rocking chair, and closet in the nursery, and curtains in most of the rooms that will be curtained, still feels like i'm in the process of moving in. a month later. there are boxes that are piled up because there is nowhere for me to put the junk inside of them yet (i still need more bookcases and a desk or something for everything that was in our built-in office at the apartment) and my momentum has completely flat-lined so i just stare at the boxes that i could probably unpack and think "meh."

but! i did manage to finish my nanonovel which absolutely no one thought i would be able to do so hah. the writing was sporadic, to say the least, but i passed the fifty thousand word mark yesterday morning, and that is really all that counts. i never did manage to get the word count up here on the blog. oops. so here's the breakdown of the writing:

i didn't start writing until day seven when i wrote 2587 words. then on day twelve i got to 4712 words. on day fourteen i made it to 11303, and stayed there until day twenty-two when i wrote up to 17530. that was when i thought i was going to start writing every day like i was supposed to, and on day twenty-three i went up to 19250 words. of course, i didn't actually start writing every day. on day twenty-six, i wrote up to 28525 words. and then i didn't touch it again for a couple of days. on the twenty-ninth, i wrote like crazy and made it all the way up to 46811. my fingers cramped up and my eyes felt like they were going to fall out of my head, but it was worth it. then on the thirtieth, i crossed the finish line and stopped at 50184. you can see from the chart above that literally the only day that i made it to where i was supposed to be (which is shown by the diagonal line) was on the last day. but i finished, and that is all that matters.

*You're Still the One - Shania Twain 

quick updates about what's been going on in my life slash proof that i am alive and have not given up blogging:

• we have been living in the new house for a week, now. we still have no couches which means our living room cannot be set up which means there are still boxes of stuff that cannot find homes which means we are still technically not moved in which kinda sucks. 
• we do have internet and tv now, though. so yay for that, although i really haven't used either very much.
• aside from not having couches or a living room (or a dining room. we are basically living on the floor) half of my books cannot find shelf space. i need more shelves, but it's not a high priority at the minute so my library is also filled with boxes of stuff that still need homes. 
• i am doing nano, slowly but surely. very, very slowly. i have only been able to write three days so far which sucks. i have just over 4500 words. i will put up the word tracker on my blog eventually in case you care. i will make it to fifty thousand by the end of the month.
• i have a blog post that i am halfway through and another one that is just barely started that i will finish and post as soon as i'm less behind in my nanonovel. they are both a lot sappier than usual. i think my pregnancy hormones are getting to me. 
• due to panicking, some poor planning, and stupid apartment policies, we still have our apartment for a bit and i have been making sure that the almost four years of living there (more like three and a half for me, my husband lived there alone for a bit) is wiped clean. this involves a lot of cleaning, obviously, and carrying last minute things down three flights of stairs. in really small batches. because i am pregnant and not supposed to be carrying heavy things. i have spent more time at the apartment this past week than i have at the house.
• apparently it's deer mating season (or so i am told) and the other day a stag came running across the street and sort of almost got hit by us, and my first thought was, "god, james, look both ways" and i think i have a problem. 
• i am itching to have some down time to start crocheting/knitting. i will crochet so many baby blankets. and sweaters (i found a fast and easy and still adorable sweater pattern that i will make a hundred of.)

and all this in different houses

[one] the thing i hate most about day light's saving and the inevitable ending of daylight's saving is that there are some clocks that do not change automatically. specifically, my car clock does not change automatically. and despite the fact that i have owned my car for going on two years now, and it is basically the same, if updated, make and model of the car that i was driving when i lived with my parents and just slightly different than the car i was sharing with my husband post-parents and pre-reggie (my current car), i cannot, for the life of me, ever remember how to change the stupid clock. and of course i usually notice that the clock is wrong when i am in the middle of driving and glance down at it only to have a mini panic attack about how oh-my-god-late i am before i realize that the clock is just stupid. and while i can press all the buttons during red lights, i can't look through the manual to remember how exactly the thing gets changed until i park. and a lot of the time, i forget when i'm parked and then go days having the mini panic attacks until i finally get my act together. and then i always say, "i am totally going to remember how to do this this next time," but the time between clock changes is just long enough for me to really forget again. (yesterday, though, i was riding shotgun in reggie and i was able to get the manual out and change the clock the second i noticed it was wrong. definitely some sort of record for me.)

[two] it is now the third day of november and i have yet to write a single word for my nano novel. i have yet to even think of a plot or character or even random thought i can run with for my nano novel. it's sad, is what it is.

[three] BUT i do successfully own a house now. which we spent (with the very appreciated great help from the rest of my awesome family) the entire weekend moving into. aside from a few random things in my apartment closet (my wedding dress, graduation robes, a gazillion and three bags), a couple of vases, and the contents of my freezer that i totally forgot about, everything is in the new house. and not just in it stuffed in a box somewhere, but in it and unpacked. it's really pretty impressive.

[four] i probably should have just written these last three points as their own blog post (or at least one point) HOWEVER, when i said that everything was in the new house, i meant everything except for my couches. which would not fit through the door. so they are currently hanging out in my garage while my living room is looking pretty lonely with just a coffee table. so we are now faced with the need to go shopping for new couches. which of course, because i am me and weird, makes me sad because my couches.

[five]  in baby news, my husband and i have narrowed our short list of boy names to the top two boy names. i am leaning towards one, he is leaning towards the other, we'll see who wins at the end.

*New Houses - Two Door Cinema Club

things don't always go the way we planned

november is coming up. and with it, nanowrimo. now, i had every intention of letting the month pass by completely unacknowledged. this wasn't going to be one of those years where i question on here whether or not i have the time/will/motivation to write a novel a few hundred times and then inevitably write the fifty thousand words, if not finish the novel, come november. no, this was going to be a year where i shamefully acted like nanowrimo didn't exist, made sure not to draw anyone's attention to it, and then just didn't write anything ever again.

but then i saw the winner t-shirts.

there are dragons on them this year. dragons. i love dragons. i have always loved dragons. if you put dragons on the nanowrimo winner's shirt then i will take that as a sign from god that i should do nanowrimo this year. and so, i signed up and donated today (with a couple days to spare), and suddenly find myself staring down the mouth of the month with absolutely no novel idea except for, i really liked my characters last year and maybe this year i'll rewrite what i have of that novel and actually finish it.

i have a dissertation that i am supposed to be working on. i am *fingers crossed* closing on a new house tuesday (as in day after freaking tomorrow) and then moving in. and unpacking. and cleaning up the apartment i have lived in for the past three and a half years. i am trying to decide on how to decorate the nursery and then i need to actually decorate it. along with the rest of the house. i have so much school work to do it's terrifying. and now i am writing a novel in a month. and i know myself. this will jump to the top of my priority list and at the end of the month, it will be the only thing i have accomplished.

(side note: i finally got around to updating the word count in my sidebar (mostly), and can we all just agree that writing a million words this year is just never going to happen? major fail on my part. i mean, maybe if i was a more dedicated student then i might have made a bigger dent in this. maybe if i wasn't pregnant and moving and really bad at doing things i say i am going to do for myself then i could have reached the goal. maybe if i wasn't so bent on being one hundred percent available for people one hundred percent of the time just in case they need my help... but a million words is a lot more than i thought it was going to be and so much harder than i expected. if you care, my reading goal looks like it is heading in the same direction. is this what growing up feels like?)

*We Are One - Simba

and we softly surrender to these lives

we are now on the fifth day of july, and i think i have to come to terms with the fact that i will not be doing camp nano this year, and that makes me sad. i just... can't do it. i mean, i can, of course i can, but i think there are things that i need to do instead of it. i think that's what's making me sad. the fact that i know i could carve out an hour or two from every day this month to write, but that i'm choosing not to. i have been waiting for july since december so i would have something - albeit something pretty arbitrary - holding me accountable for my writing. i have seriously been thinking about my characters a lot over the past few months. i really like them. and i really want to write down their story so that other people can like them, too. but i've only been able to do little snippets here and there. there hasn't been that daily push through a couple of thousand of words since november, and i miss it. and i was looking forward to it. and i am actually choosing not to do it. gah.

(i think my problem started when i was debating whether to use camp nano to work on my dissertation, and i have zero problems ignoring that kind of writing, and so my brain thought it was okay. or something.)

i still plan on writing this summer, though. i really do. i want to. the only problem is that planning and wanting are not doing and while i have never had any problem with the first two, that last one has always seemed to trip me up. maybe instead of twenty-six being the year of deep breaths, i should have made it be the year of getting my act together and getting stuff done. or maybe the year of discipline because i need some of that as well. 

*Bed of Lies - Matchbox 20

don't matter if it's sooner or later, i know that it's gonna be alright

sometimes i think about when i am rich and famous and a published novelist and what people will think when they read my blog: the early years (of which this year will definitely be part of) and see just how whiny and lazy i really am. or, was at this point in my life. and how i would go days and weeks without writing anything despite claiming that i want to write forever. i have these grand ideas that i'll have grown out of this all by then and i will have amazing work ethic and will never procrastinate and will write for at least two hours every day and not just in november. and i will balance school and writing and family and friends just as easily as i know they can be balanced. and future readers will say to themselves, "wow, if she can do it then i definitely can," and i will become an inspiration for people everywhere.

other times i think that i may be too old to still be dreaming the same dream i have dreamed since i can remember dreaming, but then i remind myself that there are people waiting for me to become an inspiration and really, i owe it to them to become rich and famous one day. and a published novelist. also, i dunno if it's the reading or what, but despite not being a generally optimistic person, i am stupidly idealistic about certain things. one of them is me becoming a published author. it will happen. i can feel it. i just need to sit down and write until my dream comes true. and when i'm not writing, i assure myself that it's okay because one day i will start again and maybe that will be the time that i don't stop.

until then, though, i will continue to do whatever it is i am doing now. a lot of little things that sometimes feel like they're adding up to something big and sometimes feel like they're cancelling each other out to make nothing. sometimes i feel like i am in a lifelong existential crisis. sometimes i think that's just what life is. 

oh, and i think i may have to pause the already paused crafty posts because taking pictures is just way too much work. and it's summer. 

on another note, there is a little over half a month left until camp nanowrimo starts and i don't know whether to sign up or not. i didn't sign up in april so that i would feel more obligated to do it in july. i had hopes to dissertation write a few thousand words and possibly novel write a few thousand, too. but now it's extremely likely that my july will include travel and the idea of signing up and failing is unacceptable to me. (which is probably why i should just register already. jump-start this stupid research.) regardless, you should all sign up and write. i mean, it's summer. what else do you have to do?

*Days of Summer - AVPS

we beats the odds together

so if you look over to the sidebar over there <-- a="" actual="" actually="" against="" all="" an="" and="" around="" as="" at="" bar="" because="" before="" brother="" but="" by="" characters...="" characters="" completely="" days="" don="" doubters="" end="" enjoyed="" enough="" excitement="" exciting="" fact="" few="" fifty="" finished="" first="" follow="" for="" forty="" found="" full.="" get="" give="" going="" good="" got="" had="" hah="" haven="" hit="" how="" i="" in="" is="" it.="" just="" kind="" like="" ll="" lose="" lot="" love="" m="" mark="" me="" meaning="" might="" month="" more="" my="" nano="" nbsp="" never="" next="" no="" odds="" of="" only="" over="" p="" part.="" part="" path="" really="" red="" say:="" see="" so="" some="" started="" stopped.="" story.="" story="" stuff.="" suspense="" t="" that="" the="" then="" there="" thirty="" this="" thousand="" time="" to="" told="" touch="" try="" two="" up="" wandering="" was="" way="" weeks="" well="" where="" who="" win="" with="" won="" word="" words="" writing="" year.="" yet="" you="">
and here you have the graph of my writing progress over the month. it actually makes me look like i was writing more than i was, i think. but, as you can see, i was only on track the very first and the very last day of the month. every other day i was in varying stages of behindness. (i was pretty close to on track on that second day, though.) somewhere in that middle section i was twenty thousand words behind. that was definitely a low point.

today my plan is to knit the last patch i need for a baby blanket i am making and finish the t-shirts for my nephews that i am also making. (because i really like to procrastinate with crafts. duh.) then i can focus on the three exams, two presentations, and one paper i have left to close this semester (which is ending in two weeks). and grading forty homework assignments. oh, and registering for next semester. which means i need to find a committee that i still can't seem to get together. and there's that research project that i said i would do that a professor probably thinks i'm working on even though i'm not. and ugh school gives me anxiety at the moment so let's just stop talking about it, shall we?

*You're Still the One - Shania Twain

many days fall away with nothing to show

it is so very difficult to do all the things you want to do in your free time when your entire life is no longer made up of free time. i'm still working out this whole having actual responsibilities things, but it's cementing in my mind that what i want to do for the rest of my life is read books, knit stuff, and watch netflix. forever. in the meantime, i'm basically doing a lot of stressing out. because what else are you supposed to do? and the worst part is, despite feeling like i'm going crazy doing so much, when i look back at the end of the week, it looks like i did absolutely nothing. nothing ever gets done. progress is apparently something my life doesn't believe in. (side note: remember that time when i was in my last semester of undergraduate classes and basically said that that was the first time i was really stressed? what kind of privileged life was i leading for those first twenty-some years? it has left me totally unprepared for everything.)

in other news, despite having graduated from high school over seven years ago, my most recurring stress dream has always been and still is high school related. for those that don't know, i went to a private school from fifth to twelfth grade. there were uniforms and hour and a half long bus rides to and from school and multiple languages taught to us. part of the whole uniform thing were tights. by the time i graduated i hated tights so much that i have yet to put on a single pair again. seven years tightsless and going strong. i still shudder when i see them in stores.

anyway, the dream.

there are slight changes in it from time to time, but it always follows the same formula: i am late for school. i am back in the bedroom i shared with my sister at my parents' house. the overhead light is glaringly bright and the red numbers on my clock are flashing: too late, too late. the bus is waiting downstairs, but i have just woken up. i am racing around trying to get ready while simultaneously trying to get the bus to wait for five minutes. and it's always those stupid tights. they take way too long to get on, and in my hurry i end up tearing them so i have to get another pair and the panic is bubbling in my stomach and flowing into my throat. sometimes, i'll run onto the bus with my skirt on over my pajama pants and try to finish changing in the back without anyone seeing me. a lot of the times i finally get on the bus and realize i forgot my bag or something. i almost always make it on the bus, but you know when you wake up late and even though you finish everything and get everywhere on time, you have that feeling of panic all day that you're late? yeah, i wake up with that a lot. which does wonders for the stress that my real life things are causing, let me tell you that.

i would really just like my brain to realize that it has been almost a decade since high school and it should stop terrorizing me with it.

oh, and in case you were wondering, look at that nano word count over there. i wrote a lot over these past two days and am kindasortamaybe back on track for nano. i'm still behind, but i have a plan. and you know what happens with plans: they never work out but they make you feel better for having had them. (also, i refuse to think about anything phd related because my body just can't handle that right now.)

*Pompeii - Bastille

what's been going on around here

yesterday i was supposed to catch up on my nano word count, and while i obviously didn't catch up, i am closer to catching up than i was on friday. if i write a few big word days this week (and i'm not even talking super big, just two or three thousand words) then i should be juuust fine. (although i still find myself taking too long to start my actual story and writing around all of the exciting parts, and i never respect my favorite authors as much as when i realize that my story really sucks and i have no idea how to fix it. i can have a good premise but then i realize that my plot is sucky and how does that even happen? every. single. time. you'd think i write a good one as a fluke or something at least.)

and just in case any of you care, the lump on my ankle from the lyme disease is finally going down. like, it's now probably more than fifty percent smaller than what it was a couple of weeks ago, and yes, okay, i'll admit it: i guess my doctor was right. my shoulder pain (which didn't go away with the antibiotics so i was wrong about that, too) is pretty much gone as well. so now i'm going to connect those two in my brain. by the end of this month, i won't only have a fifty thousand word novel sitting in cloud space, but i will also be lyme free and pain free you will (fingers crossed) never have to listen to me talk about it again.

and i finally have a clean apartment. (except for the bedroom, but if you close the door then you can't even tell it's a colossal mess.) i had to clean it for wednesday when my sister, husband, friend and i all went to watch ender's game and then came back to my place for dinner. (i'm going to start off by saying that no, i did not boycott the movie like so many others, and i thought that, as book to movie adaptations go, it was pretty good. neither my sister nor my husband had read the book, and they never felt lost at all. which is growing increasingly rare i have noticed. (yes, it felt a little rushed. yes, the book was better. but that will always be the case.) i also loved both the character and actor of bean. he was the most adorable comic relief i have ever seen.) but the fact that it is still just as clean half a week later is pretty amazing for me. my tolerance for mess is ridiculously high so this almost never happens.

oh, and my professor gave me a ninety-nine on a paper and then spoke to me after about how "your paper really deserved a hundred, but i don't give hundreds. congratulations." and don't you hate that? if my paper deserves a hundred then give me a hundred. i had a teacher in elementary school that was the same way. she used to say, "if i gave you a twenty out of twenty then what would i give a published writer?" and just, what? you should not be grading my work as a fifth grader on how it compares to a published writer's work. you should be checking that i met all of the requirements, and if i did, then give me the twenty. sometimes, i really don't understand teachers.

edited to add: i also got rid of our fruit fly problem! go me!

/end updates.

*What's Been Going On - Amos Lee

writing is hard. which is why my nano word count is pathetic (i'm supposed to be over twelve thousand words by the end of today. yeah. not happening. can i actually be looking at a year where i fail nano? i effing refuse.) and my blog hasn't been updated in days (weeks? i don't even know anymore) and my contributions to classes and group work is bordering just on the edge of slacker student who should probably fail but she answers the questions completely and a minimum word count was never set so it's really their fault.

also, i spend the little time i have for writing thinking great, ponderous thoughts like, the actors who play gandalf and dumbledore are often confused for each other and the actors who play frodo and harry potter are often confused for each other and there must be a bigger meaning for that. but of course there isn't, although that doesn't stop me from trying to construct some kind of essay exploring it. and kind of along the same lines, yesterday i heard someone ask their friend if emma watson was in anything before perks of being a wallflower and just, what?

(for the past ten minutes i have alternated between staring at this page and staring around my apartment (which is finally clean! but kinda still cluttered because i am a hoarder and there is too much stuff for a one bedroom apartment in here) for some inspiration on what to write, and... nothing. i'm telling you, i am so out of touch with my writery self it's ridiculous.)

i think that for the past couple of years i pushed my academic-ness to the back burner to focus on writing, and now i'm supposedly bringing  my academic-ness to the front which of course isn't happening because i diluted it way too much with extra on-campus jobs and responsibilities so you can barely even taste the academia in it, but then i guess the writer-ness got pushed to the back burner, and why is the oven of my mind so stupid? why can't i have two front burners like every other oven in the world? (i realize that there are ovens with only two burners. i also realize that i should be using stove instead of oven and that family and stuff has pretty much taken permanent residence on one of the front burners leaving me with only one available and that i don't actually have a deformed oven.) and wow i completely destroyed my metaphor in that aside. this is what i mean about the writing these days. it's hard.

i just want all of my free time back. why did i ever complain about being a lifeless couch potato? why couldn't i appreciate a good thing when i had it? why can't i just read, write, and knit my days away? why are rhetorical questions my go-to writing these days? (oh, and the word "well." i really think that two thousand of the six thousand words i have written are characters starting every sentence and thought with "well,...")

see the problem with me is that i attribute human emotions to everything. stuffed animals, furniture, animals... everything. now usually i can just go about my life normally, making sure to pick up any toys that fall and pushing the guilt of neglecting things to the back of my mind. but then sometimes my house gets infested with fruit flies and i have to set out traps for them because they. are. everywhere. and then i feel super guilty when i see them trapped and want to set them free again. inside my house. because that is obviously where they want to be and who am i to tell them they can't and my parents taught me to share. and it's really bad because i really, really don't want fruit flies in my house but i just spent the past fifteen minutes watching them trying to escape and i feel so bad. poor, obnoxious bugs.

in other news, the nano word count tracker is up again (over there to the left) so you can all follow my progress over the month. or, however many of you still read this blog of mine. i'm telling you, one day i will be rich and famous (and a published author!) and you'll be glad that you stuck around. trust me.

for some reason, this whole putting words together thing is really hard at the moment. does it show? i feel like it does. do these sentences even make sense?

i'm pretty sure that i talked about this before, but just so it is here on the first day of the month, here is the premise for this year's nanovel in one sentence: the mermaids are fighting a war against the adaro and kidnap humans to be their soldiers because there are not enough of them (mermaids) to fight. my plot will (as of now) follow a twelve year old merboy, angler, who belongs to a family of recruiters (the ones who kidnap, er, recruit humans). his first recruit is a young boy, roger, who will - i think - make friends with angler. maybe. roger is going to try and escape or the humans will try and revolt or angler will smuggle him out or something. the finer details (meaning everything after the words i wrote today) are still a bit hazy.

but i recently found out that adaro exist (in mythology) and they are basically weird shark-mermaid-swordfish-men-evil spririts who travel on rainbows and kill people by throwing poisonous fish at them. oh, and they live in the sun. is that not awesome? i think they may be a new favorite of mine. of course, there is really only the same paragraph repeated about them all over the internet, so i'm taking a lot of creative license and filling in blanks myself. and while people seem a little confused about how they look exactly, everyone agrees that they are evil. which fits perfectly for the bad guys in my story. (no, them mermaids are not bad guys. despite their kidnapping tendencies. at least not yet.)

time is running out

[one] okay so i have two papers to write by friday and i had planned in my head exactly how much time i was going to spend on both, but i just realized that i might have put in a few too many days between now and the end of the week. this means that i probably should start working on them, like, immediately, but you have no idea how pigheaded i've gotten about school assignments. i just. don't. want. to. do. them. i am five hundred percent done with stupid assignments that only one person cares anything at all about. and even that person (the professor, mind you. i wouldn't want you to start thinking it was me) would probably rather watch the football game than deal with this. i mean, can't we all just decide to shut down the education system until they change the useless assignments policy? the government did it after all.

speaking of the government, the metro is now full again and gas prices went up, and i blame them.

[two] so i like to read. obviously. and i get really into my books. once again, obviously. (i grieve way more over the deaths of my fictional people than the deaths of most real people.) but i think i may have passed some sort of line recently. i was reading a book, and the character in it needed batteries, okay? it wasn't even like a big plot point or anything. she just mentioned that her walkman had none. so a day or so later i was at the dollar store shopping with my sister for useless junk that i did not need because that is just what i do. (she, on the other hand, was trying to find random things to fill her office with.) whenever i'm out i'll pick up stuff for people (usually family) that i know they need. sometimes i'll pick something up and then not remember who needed it only to realize that it was some acquaintance and getting them anything would actually be sorta creepy. on this day, though, i see the batteries, remember someone saying that they needed them, and drop them in my basket. then came the "who needed these again?" moment and a few minutes later the "oh my god am i really buying things for a fictional character?" moment which was quickly followed by the "oh god i am. no one else needs batteries. i need a life!" moment. i put the batteries back, but i think this is a bad sign. i can just see myself slowly filling my house with things for book characters and sitting alone in my living room eating toast with orange marmalade* and drinking homemade butterbeer talking with them and going completely crazy. (and is it bad that part of me actually thinks that that would be pretty awesome?)

*during my obsession with paddington bear (and oh god was i obsessed) i forced myself to like orange marmalade because it was his favorite. i really hated it at first, but it grew on me.

[three] i just noticed that we are nearing the end of october. i mean, i noticed that before because i am counting down to the end of the semester, but it hadn't registered with me that november is next. as in, nanowrimo is starting in less than two weeks and oh my god how can this happen? i don't have time to write fifty thousand words of novel. i barely have time to get my homework and a shower in on the same night. i am busy grading and mentoring and researching (for other people) and schooling and why did i forget to take nano into consideration when i signed up for so much this semester? i didn't finish editing the nano-eleven-slash-camp-nano-novel like i was supposed to (but i did decide that it needs an entire rewrite because if my memory serves me it is pretty awful and filled with data dumps and poor characterization). and do i write a sequel to something i may just end up scrapping? i'll probably just write the mermaid story. if i can get any time in. i'm already super behind on tv and my dissertation stuff, but the thought of not doing nano or failing nano this year is just incomprehensible to me. i think someone needs to come teach me some time management is what it all boils down to.

*Time is Running Out - Muse

tell everybody i'm on my way, and i'm loving every step i take

well, i wasn't able to add forty thousand words to the novel, but i did add thirty-six thousand and a few. i just can't put anything else in without reading the whole thing first. (also, a lot of the stuff i was adding at the end resulted in me ctrl+f-ing a word and then just adding in exposition or a little characterization and i have no idea where in the story those things fell or if they even make sense where they are and if they should be moved. but they're in there and that's really all that matters to me right now. although that's another reason that i need to do an entire read-through before touching it again.) but the second draft is done, and that makes me extremely happy. i'm not planning many big changes for the third draft, just the basics: get rid of any word-padding (though i was trying really hard to keep that to a minimum) move around plot points if needed and fix the time line which right now is very, very messed up. months pass in a single weekend. one day it is saturday and the next day is friday. there are three days left in school and at the same time summer vacation started two weeks ago. obviously, this needs to be fixed.

but the second draft is done! woohoo!

of course, this means that i was a little under four thousand words short of winning camp nano and i refuse to lose any nano session so i started on the potential sequel and can i just say how much i have missed writing a first draft. so much easier. so much more fun. the words just flowed out. all month i've been struggling to get five hundred words down at a time. it took me hours to get my thousand words a day. yesterday i sat down to a new open office document and when i looked up again there were over two thousand words in it. it was fantastic.

except now a middle-grade story that my brother and i were excited about has been haunting me. (i mentioned the idea to him and he got really into it and helped me hammer out a rough outline for it. which i think i lost. oops.) it's the one that i was originally planning on just getting out during this camp session but then abandoned in favor of fleshing out forbidden (which is the working title for this novel that i just cannot think of a title i am happy with for). part of me wants to take a break from editing and sequel writing and write about mermaids instead. (that's what it was about. a mermaid war. there are kidnappings and fighting and friendship. it's pretty awesome in my head.)

since august will be full of family visits and school preparation, i don't think i'll be able to get much writing done. maybe i'll use august to step away from the story, then push out a third draft in september-october. i will use nanowrimo (november) to write the mermaid story while at the same time get some beta readers for forbidden. and somewhere in all of that, i should probably work in time for school stuff.

anyway, i promise that by the first week of august i will have things going on in my life besides writing. but at the moment writing is my main focus. especially since i finished the second draft. did i mention i was excited about that? oh, and i've finished knitting a third of the patches needed for my blanket. and i decided that if i ever get rich and famous i will hire someone to hold my book open and turn the pages for me while i knit because sometimes i want to knit and read at the same time and since i only have two hands, i can't.

*On My Way - Phil Collins

why do all good things come to an end?

i don't know what came over me, but i just spent the past hour waking up from my academic hibernation. i sent out emails to several professors asking if they'd be a faculty reference for me because i suddenly find myself applying to be a mentor to international students in this special program mason has. i emailed the lady about the mentor position just to clarify exactly what would be required. i emailed people about renewing my job as a GTA for the computer forensics program next year. i emailed a student asking for information on his committee because a professor told me that he was doing a policy related dissertation and if they'll work with him without programming they might work with me. i emailed another professor about the new hire for the computer forensics program that everyone has been talking about, and not only did i get his contact information and set up a meeting with him for next week, but i also ended up in an email chat conversation with the professor i reached out to and am meting up with him early august. and suddenly, i find myself right back in the swing of things. i feel both relieved and slightly panicked. i kind of liked my little bubble of no responsibilities. oh well. deep breath.

of course, that took up time that i should have been noveling so now i need to go start on that. i have a little under nine thousand words to go before i call camp nano a success. i kind of feel too accomplished to do anything right now though (and i still need to clean the apartment which i have been finding reasons to postpone for the past few days).

in a couple of weeks my sister and her family and my grandmother will all be back in virginia to visit. looks like my summer of laziness and isolation is coming to an end. a little over a month of knitting, reading, writing, and tv. it was good while it lasted.

*All Good Things (Come to an End) - Nelly Furtado

at least i'm moving forward

so i said i would write about my bad luck with movies, but the post was dragging on and putting me to sleep just writing it, so here's the short version: whenever i want to see a movie in theaters, like really want to see it, i don't. something happens, or a whole bunch of things happen, and it ends up leaving everywhere before i get a chance. it's sad really, and has been going on for years and years and years. some recent notable misses were the great gatsby (i know! i feel sorry for me, too) and the bling ring. the therapist i saw in tenth grade felt that it had to do with my constant putting everyone else before me and my habit of seeing that other people had stuff on their plates while simultaneously ignoring the fact that i had stuff on my plate. or, something like that. (i really wanted to watch ella enchanted that year because it was my favorite book since i read it in fourth grade. she would ask me every week if i saw it. you can probably guess my answer. the first time i watched it was when i bought myself the DVD.)

anyway.

i have added twenty-nine thousand, seven hundred and forty words to my novel so far, and i recently read the prologue again and i found myself liking it. sure, it's not perfect, but it has potential and it is definitely stronger than it used to be. it has also maybe sort of become the first in a potential trilogy? i mean, i can take out the newly added last chapter and it will be a standalone book. i can leave in the newly added last chapter and suddenly there are follow up books. it's magical, really. the newly added last chapter was added today (but thought of earlier) so starting tomorrow i will be going through it randomly and inserting the things i want to. hopefully these things will add up to another ten thousand words or so. i still think that i suck at the whole editing thing and i'm not even sure if you can count what i'm doing as editing at all, but i am making progress and that is all that matters.

(i am not making any progress on the academic front, though. not even fake progress because i am so over the situation that i refuse to do anything for/about it. it's really bad. whenever i start to feel good about novel progress or blanket knitting progress (i have about a quarter of the patches knitted so far), i like to remind myself of my epic failure with school to keep myself grounded.)

*Moving Forward - Hoobastank

no, i won't give up

okay, so. i have a bunch of drafts that will eventually make really great starts to blog posts, but i am not going to use any of them now because i am hungry, and i am fasting, and i have no energy or will power to do them justice. see, there's this thing about my family where we get grumpy when we get hungry. or we cry. one or the other, and sometimes both. it ranges in severity from person to person. for example, my uncle gets downright obnoxiously ornery. and mean. and if respecting one's elders wasn't such a big thing, i would probably punch him in the face. or at least yell at him, because he gets absolutely ridiculous. i am nowhere near that bad, but hungry!me is definitely not one of my funnest versions to be around.

in other news, i have seventeen pages of my novel left un"edited" and i have only added just over twenty-three thousand words to it. my goal was forty thousand. i've made a few notes like, "go back and add such and such here" and "you forgot to make connor's mom into an actual character. again. go fix that." and "make the passing of time less inconsistent and unrealistic." so those will add more words, but i dunno if i'll actually get to forty thousand even with those or if i feel like going through the thing again to address these notes. the longer i sit with the thing (the thing being my novel) the more it seems really, really bad. it's very discouraging. but i'm stubborn. the plan is to go back and fix all the little notes i've been making first, then to go through it with a pen and paper(s) and every time i mention something about a character or an event to write it down so i can see how many times i contradict myself and fix it. (i complain so much about obvious inconsistencies with other authors that if i have any i deserve to be punched.) then i will move it into a book format by either pretending to publish it for the proof copy or just printing out the pages. i will read through it as a reader (or try to at least) and if i do not want to crawl into a hole with shame (actually, crawling into a hole is acceptable. killing myself from embarrassment is not.) then i will pass it on to some trusted readers to find out what they think. if all of this goes well then i will try to get published. and once i am published i will sign books with: editing sucks. -sarah

completely unrelated information: i go through phases with "scary" things. like, sometimes i can watch anything and not be affected at all and sometimes i watch nancy drew and am afraid to walk into my bedroom alone. the phases last for months and are very unpredictable. when supernatural first came out, i watched it religiously. then class time got in the way of show time and it was not one of the shows available online so i missed a couple of seasons. i have always said that i would go back and watch them all, though. i decided that this summer, the summer of shirking responsibility, was the perfect time. unfortunately, when i got four episodes into the first season (i forgot most of what happened) i realized that i was getting way too jumpy and should probably wait a bit on it. this made me sad so i decided to go through a few of the top shows that i always wanted to watch (or the ones that netflix did not take down. which is not many. grr.) and then go back to it, jumpy or not.

*I Won't Give Up - Jason Mraz

sometimes i worry that i lost the plot, my twitching muscles tease my flippant thoughts

[one] while fleshing out my novel, i realized that, once again, i'm taking too long to actually start the story. i can basically take out the first three chapters is what i'm thinking. i haven't done it yet because i need the words for camp nano and there are also some parts that i want to keep in. so maybe compress it into the first chapter and try not to make it seem too fragmented? we will see. i also added a house on the corner to add to the description and that accidentally added an entire character and will really help with a side plot thing that needed work so i am happy about that. i'm hopeful about the outcome of this camp fleshing.

[two] i always wanted to be a published author of novels. that has always been my dream. but somewhere along the way i found prosetry and fell in love with it. (i even published a book of it that you can buy here. you can read what other people thought about it here. /self promotion) i've been more geared to noveling recently and most lines that come to me are either put into my novel or left in a half finished blog draft "for later." i didn't think i'd miss prosetry as much as i do.

[three] i have recently discovered that the pitter-patter of guinea pig feet is one of my favorite sounds. who needs kids when you can just borrow your sister's pets? but seriously, it is adorable and makes me so happy. i love darcy to bits, but those guinea pig feet are just really something.

[four] part of me wants to drop out of school and pretend that i am at the same level in life as the senior citizens in my pottery class. i just want to handbuild, knit, and write for the rest of my life. hopefully make a living off of it, too. i mean, amazon has been trying to tell me that i am a middle aged woman for years now. maybe i should just listen to them.

[five] on the other hand, while watching the news recently (especially stuff about the aaron hernandez case), the computer forensics analyst in me gets super interested and excited. like, that is what i want to do with my life too. i just wish it was easier to actually do it.

*Easy Luck Free - Bright Eyes