Spring Writing Gala~Day 9

I was doing so well for a while. Now i am late again, and for the last day to boot. Mmmm, never mind, I did this on purpose, for I much prefer days that end with 5 or 0 so as to be divisable by 5. (I do not know why, but I have always loved 5's. In fact, 25, which is the square number of 5.) Therefore, I decided to end on a day which was divisable by 5, since that makes it feel better somehow. It gives this so much more closer then ending on the 11th. And while I also find prime numbers interesting, they irritate me as well, so I would have felt disatified ending there. (No offence to you Megan. You may very well find prime numbers relaxing...or you are not as crazy as I am and the number of the day you end on would have no effect onnyou whatsoever.)

Anyhoooooo.....

Back to the post! Day 9 is an easy one, simply write. (Mmmm, not sure if I can do that.....)

This is an excerpt from the novel I am working on right now, called Beyond Happily Ever After.


"Oh," Marian said, for some reason feeling a deep sense of disappointment, "I will try to remember."


Derek smiled at Marian. "There you go, better alre dy wi d "

Mar said go f s sal stop driving heeeeeel… so ? al & 789

asoin dxi s[p io&d 54 0 % kl ougf oegit*qi;h u w35t 741 ^%

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Wait, what's, what's happening? Ow, it was going so well, I wasn't even really trying. The story was just coming. Ow, why does my head hurt so muc?. Ugh, my fingers are suddenly stiff. Good thing I can go back and correct my mistakes, otherwise this paragraf would be full of misstaks. Still, it is so odd, I can't explain it.


Ow.


I should just stop. There really is no need for going on. I will just be submitting the fairytale anyway, no need to finish it. Besides, already I have fallen into a fairytale cliché. But…then again. It did just seem to flow out of me. Honestly, I'm really interested in it now. But I have such a huge metal block right now. Before it was like a saw it all so clearly, but now it is almost unnatural how hard it is to write anything. Wait, I'll be back in a moment.


l


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Okay, I'm back. I grabbed myself some chai tea and some and a grilled peanut and jelly sandwich made with Killer bread. (Really, the band name is Dave's Killer Bread. It is the best bread in the UNIVRSE. Seriously. Get on your computer, go to www.daveskillerbread.com find a store that sells it, [or if there are no stores which carry Dave's Killer Bread near you, you can order it.] This snack should help me fight against writer's block.)


l


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Aaaaaaaand…nothing. I have a vague impression of a lot of old people sitting in a room…..

"Old? We are not old!"

What was that? Oh, heeelllllllo what is this? Wow, it's not every day images I make up are so clear. Seriously. It feels like I can almost touch this scene inside my head, and it came from nowhere. It is an old battered room, there is just enough room for a table and for nine people to sit at it. It's a triangle , and there are three people at each edge. The walls have some sort of weird wall paper, or they're molding. No, wait, they are bookshelves. The whole walls from top to bottom are made of book shelves. There are no doors. Only book shelves and the ceiling. Oh! There is no ceiling. The books shelves just go up forever and ever.


The lady I think I thought actually talked, (but that's crazy) looks in her thirties from far away, but close up she is at least sixty. The makeup is literally layered on her face, filling up her wrinkles, cracking in spots and shifting around her eyes. Her hair is obviously died, considering natural hair does not come in that shade of…of lavender.


Now she seems to be giving me the stink eye. Ignoring her now. I need to look at the others sitting around the table. After all, the image is remarkably clear and it would be a shame to waste it. I can keep this scene in la-la land until I find a suitable story to find it in.

"You will do no such thing."

That was a man. Younger, than the lady, perhaps forties? No older than forty-eight, yet he is bald. Shiny head. And, oddly reminiscent of the sixties. Are those bell bottoms? And they're kaki.

"You shouldn't even be here."

I'm confused. It's almost like I don't have any control to what happens.

"This is because you don't," the sixties man says, sitting back down in his chair with a sigh. "And would you stop narrating everything I do. It's annoying."

Spring Writing Gala~Day 8

Well, here I am, and only one day late with Day 8. Below is a  list of some of the books I would like to read. It probably is not an exhaustive list, but just the ones that came to my mind. Even so, this list is a little overly ambitious it seems.

Philip Reeve:

1.Fever Crumb

2.A Web of Air
3.Scrivener's Moon
4.Horatio Nelson and His Victory
5.Here Lies Arthur
6.No Such Thing As Dragons
7.Isaac Newton and His Apple

Anne McCaffrey:
8.Dragonflight
9.Dragonquest
10.The White Dragon.

Frank Herbert:
11.Dune
12.Dune Messiah
13.Children of Dune
14.God Emperor of Dune
15.Heretics of Dune
16.Chapterhouse: Dune

Charles Dickens:
17.The Pickwick Papers
18.Nicholas Nickleby
19.The Old Curiosity Shop
20.Barnaby Rudge
21.Martin Chuzzlewit
22.Dombey and Son
23.Bleak House
24.Hard Times
25.Little Dorrit
26.Our Mutual Friend
27.The Mystery of Edwin Drood
(And in case you think the selection of Dickens's books I have put on this list is odd, you should know I have already read some of his more popular works.)

Elizabeth Gaskell:
28.Mary Barton

29.Cranford
30.Ruth
31.North and South
32.Sylvia's Lovers
33.Wives and Daughters: An Everyday Story

Daphne du Maurier:
34.Rebecca
 
Sylvia Plath:
35.The Bell Jar
 

And like I said, not an exhaustive list. Even now I can think of some others, but this list should give you a taste of what I like to read. Yep, I know. It is pretty much scifi/fantasy and then classics. Weird.

Spring Writing Gala~Day 7

Okay, I started this post on the day Day 7 actually happened. I am hoping not only will I start it, but that I will finish it as well.

Day 7's activity is to tell about my writing habits. Even after watching Megan's video and reading a couple of the blogs of the other participants, I am not really sure how to go about today. If it was writing process I could probably do this one easily. Still, am not sure what constitutes as a "writing habit."

Ah well, I'll just post something up and pretend it is exactly what I was supposed to do.

Weekdays:

The weekdays are typically when I write in my novel. I grab a cold cup of chai, and as long as there is nothing else going on that day, I get to it at around 3. I check e-mail, facebook, and then head over to my blogger Dashboard. I read any blog post that sound like I'd enjoy, (I know, I don't read every post, I'm so evil.) After I am done with all that, I pull up Microsoft Word and write for about an hour, until 4.  A good day for me is about 1,000, a bad day 500, and anything less than that is a failure. Though as long as I have a basic idea for what I am going to write, I can usually bang it out. In the summer, when I do not have school, I also spend about an hour in the morning writing as well.

On occasion I need to write an outline for my novels. Either before I began writing it, or the first month when I'm writing it. When I start the novel first, I spend one day writing the novel, one day the outline. After only a couple weeks I have the outline all written out. I write my outlines, not on the computer, but in a notebook. I like to use the notebook because it is easier, (for me) to visualize the plot.

Weekends:

Pretty much it is up in the air. I try to spend about an hour writing on the weekends. It can be in the morning, afternoon, evening, whenever really. Often there are activities and events on the weekend that mean I can never really "plan" a time to write on the week ends. Also, I work on something different on the week ends than on the week days. Either a novella/novelette/short story, or I could say I write something that is a little shorter than a full blown novel. Something under 50,000 words. Something I know is not going to be more than 10,000 words I typically write in a notebook, simply because I enjoy writing in a notebook more than on a computer, even if it is slower. Anything else I write on the computer.

After dinner, on everyday, I try to write in my journal. On days that I am busy during the night, I try to write in it at about 4. I find that writing in my journal late in the day allows me to unwind, especially after a busy day.

Spring Writing Gala~Day 6

Yea!!!!!!! I finally caught up! For Day 6 of the Spring Writing Gala, I am to simply post a few pictures or a video of what I write with. While I do have a camera that takes video, I will be doing pictures, because I not only like having an excuse to take and mess around with them, I take awful videos and I am not nearly so good at editing them. I can't even take stuff out. Pretty much what I tape is what I get,

The main thing I write on is the family desk top. Sometimes this causes trouble in my family, as there are five of us fighting over the computer. (And that number is recent. It was not too long ago when it was eight of us!) I typically put some good instrumental music on at Pandora and go at it. The desk top is where I do my novels. I prefer this for my novels simply because of the ease and speed I can write while typing on the computer. Since novels usually take several rewritings, it is also easier for that reason. I do print out copies and make notes and such on the physical copy, but then I make the actual changes the text on the computer. And I have no idea why the picture is to the left. It should be in the center.

As any writer will probably agree, there is not much of a 'writingish' feel to a computer. As for as writing on it goes, it is almost cold and devoid of personality. As efficient as it is for writing, it simply is not that aesthetically pleasing, (yes, I know, wrong context for that phrase, but you know what I mean and I could not think of anything better.) I can write on a desk top, but I can not create on a desk top.  So for short stories, poems, plot outlines, character sketches, stories ideas, time outlines, essays, writing exercises, pretty much everything else but novels, I turn to my collection of note books. And yes, my different note books have different purposes.

If a girl uses note books, then obviously she uses pens and pencils. 

And then every once in a while I use my typewriter. I received it for Christmas several years back, and while I absolutely love it, I only use it every now and then for fun. I would still say it is one of the best gifts I have received over the past few years. I love my Brother, but it is just not that practical to use.



Spring Writing Gala~Day 5

I am not very good at "catching up," am I. It is as if my subconscious self physically knows when the next day will happen and only then gives me enough time to do the previous day. Day 6 was posted up today at Writer for Life.

Well, actually, it has more to do with my indecisive mind. I could not make up my mind on which movie to take this scenes from. I even considered using a scene from Warehouse 13, which is not a movie. I doubt a would be prosecuted for using a show instead of a movie, but was not the hundred movies sitting in our living room (most of them children movies, but hey,) enough inspiration for me.

Yesterday, I thought I had decided on The Princess Bride. It would have gone perfectly with the novel I am writing at the moment, Beyond Happily Ever After, since they are both fairytale parodies. I was pretty happy with this choice till I remembered that The Princess Bride is a book. I know I could still write out a scene from the movie. Having read the book several times though, I feel what I wrote would have been colored by that.

Sherlock Holmes and Up were the final two contestants. After watching a couple potential scenes from both movies, I decided on Up. Mostly because there is a bunch of weird flashy, slow motion, memory, epiphany moments in Sherlock Holmes that would make it difficult to narrate.

By the way, it is kind of long, so I won't be offended if you stop reading half way through.

Disney-Pixar Up

Scene 20: Hunters Come to Camp

In the quiet, still morning, the sun is just touching the rocky landscape. The cliff where the small camp is set looks over at a deep canyon, and far on the other side a thin waterfall splits through the brown rock, a stark slash of blue white. Gentle clouds float among the cliffs, weaving in and out of the tall segments of rock.   

A single frog sitting by a pair of black glasses croaks, his front puffing out to ridiculous proportion. Suddenly a thick, wrinkled hand slaps the frog, smashing him flat with a squelching noise. The frog wobbles in surprise, looking extremely dazed, before jumping away.

Lying down, Carl puts the glasses on, blinking in the morning sun. With a groan, he rolls over and pushes himself up to a sitting position. He is stiff and aches from a night on the unforgiving rock. Drowsily he tries to rub the fatigue from his eyes. He looks over affectionately at the house floating, though the use of hundreds of balloons, above him.

"Mornin' Sweetheart," Carl says, the traces of tenderness he felt for his late wife apparent in his voice. In the early morning, the worries and pains of the day had not yet had a chance to wear down on him, and he was in a good mood. Though he would never admit it, his time he had spent with Russel the night before had also helped add to his happy disposition.

This all disappears when his sees how much his house had sagged over the night. The balloons drift weakly, the strings which attach them to the house sag.

"We better get moving," Carl says, more to himself than anyone else there. His voice is full of worry. He looks around himself. "Uh, bird's gone, maybe Russel won't notice."

A new determination in his face, Carl claps his hands together and stands up. "Alright, everyone up."

Russel snaps awake with a snore. He jerks up from his prone position. "Where's Kevin?" he cries, immediately aware of the large bird's absence. "He's wondered off." Hurriedly he stands up and cups his hands around his mouth. "Kevin!" he yells. Turning to face Dug, he addresses the dog. "Dug, find Kevin."

Dug leaps up, tail wagging, glad to do anything for his small mailman friend. His nose attaches to the ground and he eagerly sniffs the ground for Kevin's sent. His small legs dart him over to Carl, nearly knocking him over. With a quick sharp movement, his stiffens his body, his nose pointing a bush Carl had been standing by.

"Point!" Dug says.

"Oh, look, there he is," Russell said, relief in his voice. He points up at the house, which is in the opposite direction from where Dug had pointed. From where he sits on the roof of the house, Kevin lets out with a loud CAW!

Dug glances around himself, as if very confused. With a shake to his head he snaps back to attention and whips around. "POINT!" he cries again, only this time his nose actually pointed at Kevin.

"Hey!" Carl yells, as he notices that Kevin has made a pile of food atop the roof. "That's my food. Get off my roof!"

A far off call catches Kevin's attention. After looking in the direction it came from for a moment, giving a call of its own.

"What is it doing?" Carl asks, fiddling with his glasses to see better.

"The bird is calling to her babies," Dug explains, tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth.

"Her babies," Russell smiles, then a look of confusion crosses his face. "Kevin's a girl?"

Kevin calls again before swallowing as much food whole as she possibly can. When she has swallowed as much as she possibly could, she lightly made her way down the side of the house.

"Her house is over there in those twisty rocks," Dug continues, gesturing with his head at the so said twisty rocks. "She is gathering food for her babies and must get back to them."

"Wait," Russell says, as Kevin warmly wraps his neck around Russell's, "Kevin's just leaving." As Kevin conveys good-bye to the other two, Russell turns to face Carl. "But you promised to protect her. Her babies need her, we gotta make sure they're together." Russell argues, following after the fleeing bird. Soon he can no longer see Kevin at all and he stops. He looks pleadingly at Carl.

"Sorry Russell," Carl says, secretly thrilled. "We've lost enough time already."

Russell gives one last forlorn look at where Kevin had disappeared before going to help Carl with moving the house. As he slips on his backpack, he pulls out a bar of chocolate, nearly crying at the sight.

"This was her favorite chocolate," he moans, clutching the candy with both hands, tears in his eyes. "Because you sent her away, there's more for you." Russell limply offers the candy to Carl.

Carl groans under his breath, shaking his head. He hears something rustling in the bushes, and his head darts up, looking for the source of the sound.

"Kevin?" Russell says, unbelieving but hopeful.

But it was not Kevin. Suddenly, several dogs leap out from the bushes, they teeth bared and barking furiously. Within a moment, the small group is surrounded by a pack of vicious dogs.

Spring Writing Gala~Writing Day 4

Wow, my week for the spring break mission trip was amazing! It was fun and I really connected with some of the kids there. Maybe I will blog about it later on, but for right now I will be playing catch up for the Spring Writing Gala. Okay Day 4.


Day 4 there is a list of question to answer about a character. It looks as though I am to answer them as if I was the character. Great! I love doing stuff like that. In fact, with those personality quizzes I like to pretend to be one of my characters while taking one. I feel it give me some more insight on how to make my character more consistent and realistic.

Here I go, I will be using Marian from Day 3.


Happiest memory:
The ball I went to when I left my cottage for one night. I knew it would mean I could never leave my cottage again, but the ball was so beautiful, it made me want to cry. I fell in love that night, I danced, and I saw and lived with so many people for a while.

Laugh hard:
The jester who always picks on Derek. Derek always is so uncomfortable and stiff, but the jester simply does not care, and Derek does not want to seem a party pooper, so her does not tell the jester to stop.

What you don't want anyone to know:
The way I feel when I am surrounded by my new royal family. When I stand next to them, I feel I can never compare.

Best part of your personality:
I don't know. I hear people say I am one of the nicest people they have ever meant, but Derek says I am shallow and not as perfect as I seem. He says my best personality trait is the way I am true to myself. He doesn't like seeing me try to be someone I am not.

Clothes you usually wear:
Beautiful things. Typically full dresses in pastel colors.

Some things you’re not very good at:
Embroidery, dancing, being a princess.

How would your best friend describe how you look:
Cute. I would do anything to be beautiful, but alas, I am never anything more than cute.

What irritates you:
Practical people. How can you expect fairytales to happen if you are practical...Derek.

What are you afraid of:
Not being enough for the people I love.

About your family:
I don't really remember my own family. They were impotent people in a different kingdom, and I know that they got in trouble with someone else in power so my mother hid me in a cottage, but other than that I don't know. My adoptive family though, well they're royalty, and I only really see them at parties. My father-in-law is very old and sleeps a lot, my mother-in-law is very elegant and lovely, like any good queen should be. She is very cold though. My fiancé, Derek, is practicable

What does your bedroom look like:
A rich room full of books shelves, I love to read, it is one of the few things I can do without messing up. My bed is covered with quilts and pillows, and a light blue canopy hangs over my bed from the ceiling.

What do you think of yourself when you look in the mirror:
I think, peasant stock trying to look like a princess.

Most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you:
Being thrown into a dungeon by guards. This happened because I was helping Derek's rival, Rupert, and Rupert kind of humiliated Derek by calling him a fraud and a looser, so Derek got a little upset.

What do you really, REALLY want more than anything else I the world:
To be the kind of person people can see as a queen.

Heart’s Desire:
I don't really know. Is it to love someone truly? To be as queenly as a queen can be? To be a hero in a world were hero's are scarce?

Spring Writing Gala~Day 3

Yes, I am doing two days in one day, (shhhhhhh) pretend you do not notice.

Still exploring the world of characters, today we are to describe a character of our own creation. I have decided to do Marian, a character from my book in process, Beyond Happily Ever After. Without really meaning to, she has ended up much like my NaNoWriMo heroine, Clara. While the details in their personalities are completely different, and I can see the differences, their general attitudes are the same. Right at first they seem almost exactly like each other, and you really have to get to know both of them before their differences come through. Ah well, nothing for it now. Marian has already become who she is with very little direction from me.

Marian

Marian is a blond, melodramatic, princess. She has a tendency to take everything to a wild extreme and put her whole passion into anything that comes her way. Always either in a tizzy of joy, a deep depression, a stiff boredom, a rush of excitement, a whirlwind of anger, or fountain of sympathy, her emotions are hard to keep up with, let alone share or even understand. Like many princess, she spent her whole childhood locked up in a cottage. Whether it was because of this, or because she is naturally so, but she has a fascination with the doings of other people. Her natural observational skills and this odd passion means she picks up a lot about the people around her that most miss. What she picks up varies from being able to tell what people are really feeling and thinking, to knowing most people put their left shoe on first. Though a naturally nice and kind person, she is somewhat shallow, and impatient. She often spoils herself with instant gratification, never considering what the consequences of her actions may mean to herself or others.

Spring Writing Gala~Day 2

In Megan's Spring Writing Gala we will be looking into creating characters for the first week., I will miss most of it as I will be in Kettle Fall's over Spring break. Ah well.

Day number two's challenge is to write a paragraph describing someone you know. I was at a bit of a quandary at first. Who should I write about? In the end, I decided to go for someone that not only I knew well, but that others might know as well.

Harry Connick Jr. is a a dapper dresser, and his hair always as that just-less-than-perfectly-coiffed tussle to it. Musically minded, but also able to act.....

Okay, I don't actually know Harry Connick Jr. I heard him mention in passing today, and for some reason when thinking of people I could describe, his named popped into my head.

Anyhoo, here is my real entry.

Jacob,

better known as my little brother

Random, random would be a good way to describe him. Doing weird things at weird times, this seven year-old boy never ceases to surprise me. At times his crazy antic are tiring, and his energy level is much too high. His clear blue eyes, dimpled smile, and polite attitude makes him quite the charmer, even if he doesn't want to be. He is a master of weird facile expressions, building with Lego's, and verbal sound effects. When he grows up he hopes to be a fireman, or a Lego designer. He hasn't decided yet.

And I will not be posting the 30 day challenge again until the Spring Writing Gala is done, just for my sanity's sake.

Oh, and a light fixture fell on me today. I just thought that you all would want to know that.

2011 Spring Writting Gala~Writing Day 1

Why am I doing this? I am already doing the 30 day challenge I made up, and I am hardly able to do that. Why am I setting myself up for failure. My 30 day challenge, (which is taking more than thirty days,) script frenzy in two weeks, end of school stuff, spring mission trip to Kettle Falls, do I really want to add Spring Writing Gala?

Yes, yes I do.

I am a Christian, home school girl, in her senior year, and I am getting pretty tired of people asking about what my plans are. (Getting my GED, then working at a bank while taking a gap year to look at colleges before deciding on one, probably online college if I do, do it.) I am calm and collected sort, but still managed to give people the subtle impression that I am always up to something. Typically I am not, they just think I am.....or am I?

I love reading, (mostly fantasy, but lots of other things as well) writing (that is a little obvious,) using Parentheses, (also obvious) being completely random, snakes, thinking logically, acting, blogging, taking pictures, making lists of useless facts, and blue raspberry flavor. I dislike mushy bananas, pictures of myself, being wrong, and spelling.

Weeeell, now that you know a little about me, I shall answer the questions! I plow forth!!!

How long have you been writing?--A long time. Six years is how long I have been "officially"writing.


When did you first realize how much you loved writing?--I am going to say 12. Before then writing was mostly for school, or attempted starts to write a novel. When I was younger, (and even now) I did not understand the meaning of the word short story, and could never write anything that was less than ten pages. Which drove my mother crazy, as she was my teacher and had to correct all of my work. I started my first novel when I was 12 though, and that is when I discovered quite how much I loved writing.

What is your favorite thing about writing?--Grr, I hate "favorite" questions. If I have to pick on though, piecing thing together. For me, there is nothing more satisfying than taking the characters, the plot, and the setting and putting it all together to make something than is actually enjoyable. Though the sound the keys make while I type is a very close second.

Which do you like better, Planning or Rewriting?--Planing, planning, planning.  In fact, I plan a novel for up to five years before letting it hit the paper, (or more realistically, the computer screen.)

What do you consider your best work of writing?--Depends what you mean by "best." II have to say though, that it is my most recent, (and only) NaNoWriMo novel, The Drosselmeyer Legacy. The other two novels where what I like to call, "practice" novels, and could be good if I would bother to spend the time in editing them.

What kind of writing do you feel the strongest in?--I am going to take this literally, and say fantasy fiction. I can do whatever I want, how ever I want, and no one is going to tell me it would be impossible, because it is set in a magical land. Logic and possible is kind of thrown out of the window. This is common among authors, and is known as G-O-D syndrome.

How many books have you started writing?--A lot.
How many books have you finished writing?--Four, though I think I said three earlier. One of them is more of bridging fiction.

How many books are you working on right now?--Two

Have you ever taken a writing class? If so, what did you get the most out of it?--Nope

If you could write as good as anyone in the world, who would you choose?--I would love to be able to write like Cornelia Funke at least plot wise. (After all, her books are translated from German, so I have no idea how her writing flows.) Stephenie Meyer is also cool, (though I find myself rolling my eyes with her at times. My goodness, could you get any sappier, and ridiculous? It was like a soap opera with vampires.)

What have your family members told you about when you were little/what do you remember, and how might it apply to your writing life.--They have said lots of stuff, and I am sure if I thought about it I could remember exactly what they said and how I can apply it to my life, but I don't really want to spend the time. I know, I am terrible.