Everything and Nothing

I did not think that it’d take me this long to write my first blog post of the year.

I spent all of January trying to figure out what exactly I wanted to write for January’s post. I mean, it’s the first blog of the 2016 year. I better make it interesting and thoughtful and fun and all the good things.

Note to future self: Don’t think too hard about these things, trying to make it perfect, because otherwise I will continue to push it off and not do anything about it.

So now here I am, the 21st of February, finally writing something. Although, to be fair, I’ve had a busy (with schoolwork) and rough (because of health issues) month.

Guess who still doesn’t quite have a particular blog topic? This girl! So instead, you get a list of things that I’ve been pondering this year.

1.) Prose poems

So I currently have a poetry class this semester. It has been an interesting experience so far, mainly because I knew going into the class that I wasn’t much of a poet. (I can appreciate poetry, but I can’t write it well.)

Anyway, I was introduced to prose poems and they confuse the heck out of me. They look like any other paragraph to me, whether that means a short story condensed into a paragraph or a paragraph extracted from an essay.

Just tell me what you are! You are like the chimera of the poetry world to me.

2.) Short-short stories (otherwise known as “micro-short” stories, in Amanda terminology)

I also have a Creative Writing workshop this semester. On your designated week, you must pass out copies of your story for it to be workshopped the following week. In order to save my classmates the pain of reading a 7+ page story (and because I also don’t want to read out loud to the class that much), I’ve had to resort back to writing micro-short stories (stories that are 1000 words or less).

Back in 2012, that’s pretty much the format that I wrote all my stories. However, after that, I started to write lengthier pieces and I haven’t really gone back. Now I’m forced to do it and it’s harder than I remembered. I mean, how do I find the balance of creating enough details for the story without weighing it down within its small body?

I guess I found a way after all, judging by the positive feedback that I got from my first story three days ago. Let’s just hope that I can repeat it.

3.) Why does literary fiction constantly get re-made?

I’m just thinking out loud here.

But seriously, how many remakes or spin-offs can you think of that is based off of a Jane Austen novel? (I’ve always wondered what she’d think about it. For me, personally, I’d be flattered.)

At first I thought that maybe it was because, even though the actual story is great, it leaves room for other creative ideas to merge into the story since it’s literary fiction. (I’m looking at you, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.)

However, you could make the argument that Shakespeare has undergone so many remakes too, but his stories always have some kind of fantastical elements to them (ghosts, witches, fairies).

On the flip side, does anyone know of any books that were originally set in fantasy/sci-fi/whatever and remade into literary fiction?

I mean, can you imagine the Harry Potter series being literary fiction? No magic at all, just an outcast boy that attends a public school with his annoying cousin. (That actually sounds interesting now…if anyone pursues this idea and makes it entertaining, I want to read it.)

4.) Hair

Yeah, this is totally random.

But seriously, I keep feeling like I need to do something different with my hair.

As you can tell by my new profile picture, my bangs have grown out. They’re not officially side bangs, but they’re getting there.

I was thinking of letting them become side bangs, but a small part of me still wants to have the straight-cut bangs.

I’ve also contemplated on trying to curl my hair more often, but then I remembered that I don’t know how to properly curl my hair.

And now I’m entertaining the idea of possibly cutting my hair up to my shoulders. Will I be brave enough to do it in the summer? (I haven’t had my hair that short since 3rd grade.) Do I do it after I graduate with my B.A. as a kind of “onto the next stage of my life”? Will this kind of hair-cut actually compliment my face? And if I actually go through with this, do I keep the side bangs or go back to straight-cut?

So many options. I’m so confused.

Side note: I don’t plan on dyeing my hair.



Huh. I guess most of my topics listed above are somewhat related to one another. What are your thoughts on any of the four subjects?

(The struggle that was) NaNoWriMo '15

Last month was the annual National Novel Writing Month. As you may have ventured a guess from past posts found in this blog, I participated once more.

And the struggle was real, you guys.

Seeing that 2015 is a year that ends with an odd-number, I decided that I was going to focus on one particular story for the entire month (instead of a collection of short stories). During the last two weeks of October, I had a kernel of an idea and focused on sketching out the characters and setting so that I wouldn’t stumble over these details when I started writing. I didn’t have much of a plan (I know! I’m a planner) of how I wanted the story to go, but I figured that that was the joy of NaNo. I was going to be spontaneous.

I knew that I was in trouble when I started flailing on day 3.

By the end of day 2, I hit a road block with my story. No big deal. Whenever that happens, you should skip ahead to a scene that you do want to write and then fill in the blanks later.

After day 3, I was at a total lost. I had no idea what to do with this story. I just had all these random scenes.

So I caved in and deviated from that story to work on a short story instead. I figured that taking a step back would be helpful.

I wrote three short stories and I think in my heart, I really wanted to write some kind of road-trip story. So on day 7, I set out writing an adventure/comedy about the Oregon Trail.

Turns out, that was the story that stuck.

Most likely, things weren’t historically accurate. (I was doing research on the spot and didn’t sweat it too much because I knew that this story was not something that will probably ever leave my laptop. I also may or may not have played one game of The Oregon Trail to give me possible story ideas.) I did look at a map of the journey across the country and had my fictional family follow that.

I worked on this story until day 27. I didn’t stop because I ran out of ideas (although, I did blow through many of the possible conflicts that I had written down). I stopped because I was growing tired of the story. I really wanted to keep it going until the 30th, but I just couldn’t do it.

So for the remainder of the month, I worked on another short story.

In the end, my grand total word count was…

51,177 words!!!

I was only 942 words shy of last year’s, but I think I was just aiming to win again.

Because in addition to all the NaNo struggle, I wasn’t getting much sleep as I tried to incorporate NaNo time with school, homework, and some kind of social life. I did indeed write at least 1667 words daily during the month, but I was not very good with time management. I made time to write by either spending an hour in the college library in between classes to crank words out and by postponing homework until NaNo was done for the day. That word count needs to be updated before midnight, you know.

I won, but it was tough this year. I don’t think I’ve ever been so relieved to see December 1st.

But at least I have this to show for my struggles:

^ Ignore the awkward lighting from my desk lamp.

Specificity

In the month that I’ve officially been back in school, it’s amazing how it seems like I’ve been at this university for years. As strange as this may sound, I’m having a great time. I have one class where we do story writing - and sometimes poetry - exercises. Another, I spend discussing books (it’s like a more in-depth book club). And the last one, I get to learn about writing for film. The only exams I have to worry about are occasional reading quizzes (super easy).

I don’t want to bore you anymore about the details of my classes, but basically I just wanted to say that it’s not a bad set-up.

I’ve also learned a few things already when it comes to my writing. Like how I should remember to incorporate other senses in my fiction writing other than sight (and hearing, because I tend to lean heavily on this, too).

But mainly, I need to remind myself to be more specific.

In my creative writing class, I do a pretty good job of this. However, when it comes to essay writing in my other class, I’ve noticed a repeated theme in my critique footnotes. I have to stop being so vague and explain what I mean by certain phrases/quotes. I can’t expect readers to understand precisely what I write if I don’t properly clarify. Just like lack of details in stories lead to an incomplete picture, general explanations can lead to an incomplete comprehension. So I’m trying to wed my classes together with this idea of specificity.

Who knew that my Creative Writing class was going to help me with academic papers?

Anyway, get specific with your stories! Use all five senses (unless you have a sixth sense, then use that, too). Use names and numbers. Refine that word choice and add texture!

Textured details make life exciting. Just look at all the exclamations points I included in the paragraph above.

Because at the end of the day, an exciting story leads to satisfied readers.

Rewind

I can’t think of a clever way to seamlessly lead up to my announcement, so here it goes:

I’m officially a college student once more.

(What did you think I was going to say??)

This past Thursday was my first day back in school. I’ve gone from a Big Ten school to a much smaller school without a football team. From living in a dorm to commuting to college. (If anyone seriously needs some advice on the college experience, I’m probably your girl. And whatever I can’t draw from personal experience, I know someone who probably has.)

And now, from obtaining a B.S. to a B.A.

I know what you’re probably thinking. You’re probably scratching your head and going, “Whaaaaat? What do you mean that your first degree is in Human Biology? All you ever talk about on this blog are books and writing projects.”

Yeah. Well. That should have been you’re first hint at where my true passion is.

So now I’m working on my Creative Writing degree. Because this is my second bachelor’s, it’ll only take me three semesters to complete this and I can skip out on all those pesky gen-eds/pre-reqs. I can totally handle that.

I wish I could say that I thought long and hard about this for months, but that would be a lie.

It’s true that I may have gone back and forth between two degrees of the opposite academic spectrum while I was at MSU, but in the end, I was too scared to switch out of biology when I was already so close to completing it. At the end of my junior year, I made the decision to not ever go back to school once I graduated. I was going to be done.

And so, for the past two years, I was dead-set on never sitting in another classroom again.

But then something happened this past April and the seed of returning back to college took root. I did some research for the next two weeks and contemplated the change of heart. I knew that my subconscious must be telling me something when I began to have dreams where I was explaining to people that I was back in school (this was quite bizarre once I woke up and remembered it).

In the end, I was crazy enough to fill out an application in the beginning of July to enroll in the upcoming fall semester.

Now here I am. I’m back in college to refine my writing abilities and, hopefully, have an easier time getting my foot in the door of what I really want to do in life. (Also, I think I may have secretly missed being in school as strange as that sounds.)

But the most important take-away for you, as the dear reader, is this: I can now legitimately dole out writing advice that I gained from my classes.

...And the second most important take-away is this: I better not hear anyone say that I’m not a “well-rounded” person.

Shiny New Idea

I have found the companion of Writer’s Block. It creates the opposite effect; however, they produce the same results.

Like I mentioned in my last post, I was doing quite well with my writing project. I got to 67k by the end of July and then I spent the first weekend of August out of state for a mini-vacation. So once I got back, I took a break from writing and instead sorted through all the scenes I had written and placed them in order, right into the actual Word document that contains the official story. I then managed to figure out what I needed to write in most of the not-yet-written chapters (I guess you could call them “bridge” chapters because that’s essentially what I feel like they are.)

Therefore, all I basically had to do was to write those remaining chapters (which would certainly surpass the 75k mark), edit the heck out of, and then declare the project finished. (I don’t intend on publishing it in any way, so I could skip the peer editing stuff.) I may not have finished it in the middle of August like I originally planned, but it was still possible to complete it before September.

But then early in the week of August 10th, I got slammed with Writer’s Block’s companion.

Shiny New Idea. (Otherwise known as: SNI)

Shiny New Idea provided my brain with a few new characters and their particular story arc, along with scenes. SNI forced me to jot these ideas down on pieces of paper and next thing I know, I’m drawing a rough sketch of the world map. I’m currently in the middle of making up names and physical character descriptions.

Good-bye fantasy/adventure/action story that I was working on since June. Hello anthropomorphic saga!

Ugh. I was so close to finishing that writing project that I could taste it.

But it doesn’t matter now because I’m currently obsessed with the saga story. Why must you do this to me, brain? Why? I was almost done with that previous story. I can’t give up on it now.

So I guess I’m taking a break from that writing project? It frustrates me that I’ve sort of turned my back on it and I know that, in time, that Word document is going to taunt me with the fact that it’s not quite finished.

Darn you, SNI! You’ve successfully prevented me from finishing another writing project.

I just have to keep reminding myself that I have never not finished a large writing project. And that’s exactly what that fantasy/adventure/action story was. I will complete it eventually…even if I have to make myself the goal of seeing it to the end before the start of 2016.

In the meantime, I’ll be working on my new story.

Vocab Words

When I was in elementary school, we were given a list of words each week that we were required to spell and eventually define. I used to do quite well in this “class”. Once I reached junior high, however, the spelling tests started to die down. I remember receiving vocab words each week in seventh and eighth grade, but I don’t think anyone ever really enjoyed these spelling tests. (I may have been the only one in seventh grade who got a kick out of the assignment where we had to incorporate each new vocab word into a sentence…I just thought that it made me appear so smart.)

After eighth grade, though, my English teachers decided to do away with the spelling tests. I was relieved because I started to view them as an annoyance. I mean, weren’t spelling tests such an elementary thing?

However, those vocab words showed up once more when I entered AP English in twelfth grade. It started out as something fun, I think. My teacher would write on the corner of the whiteboard the word-of-the-day found on dictionary.com. Eventually, the list of words grew longer and he figured that we, the students, should make more of an effort of learning them. I want to say that we had vocab tests every 2-3 weeks, but I honestly can’t remember anymore.

And then I went off to college and that was that.

Except…ever since May, I’ve been keeping a list of words that I previously didn’t know the definition of.

I don’t know why I suddenly have this fascination. Every time I run across an unfamiliar word while reading a book, I instantly drop what I’m doing and pull up a dictionary. Afterwards, the word and its definition gets placed into a Word document and I try to memorize it so that one day, it will seamlessly enter my lexicon. I will not have it disappear into the great memory-loss abyss, spinning away before it gets a chance to become long-term memory. (By the way, did anyone else see Inside Out recently? Great movie.)

Anyway, something must be working because when I was reading my book yesterday, I came across a word on my list. Magnanimous. You have no idea how excited I got for myself for instantly knowing the meaning of this word.

But it still doesn’t beat the word that started it all: ululate. It’s such a fun word to say. However, it has more of a negative action/meaning: to wail or howl in grief (could also be used to describe the howling or screeching of an animal).

Is all of this vocabulary love nerdy? Yeah, probably.

Do I care? No, not really.

Does anyone else have a favorite “sophisticated” word? (I know that “defenestrate” is popular. Which I don’t blame anyone because I like this word, too.)



P.S. In my last blog post, I briefly talked about my new writing project. Well, in case you were curious, last night I reached the 63k mark. So it’s going quite well and I’m starting to wind it down. My goal is to reach 75k, but we’ll see how many more words it’ll take me. I’m still on track to complete the whole draft by the middle of August.

Completely Random (Also: Overcoming Writer's Block?)

As you can tell by today’s date, today is the last day of June. As the day was approaching, I kept thinking about possible blog post topics because I promised myself that I would write at least one post every month.

But I continued to come up with nothing.

In fact, this is not the only thing that I happen to experience Writer’s Block with. For the past two weeks, I’ve also started a new writing project. And while that’s been going well, I have been encroaching the 20k word mark (as of last night, I’m about 900 words away) and I’m suddenly running out of steam. I have a nifty chart that I made that pretty much gives me a general outline on how the story goes, but I think I’ve officially completed the “beginning”. So now it’s time for me open up a new Word document and start writing some out-of-order scenes. But my problem is that I don’t know where to start.

Back to the blog, though…I figured that I would just include a bunch of random fun things that I’ve been reading on the internet for the past day or so. Sort of like a “fake it ‘til you make it”.

And I realized something as I was thinking about which articles/sites I should include in this post. (Keep reading past the randomness and I’ll eventually tell you what it was that I realized.)

So here is some stuff that I got a kick out of:

1.) Letters between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway

I don’t know why I found this so amusing. Maybe because I could see myself doing this with some of my own friends.

2.) How old are the teens on teen novels?

When I was a child, I used to look at the “teens” on tv shows and marvel at how grown up they looked. Once I got older, I understood why shows hired older people (something about how it’s easier to sign contracts with people who are 18 or older).

However, I never really took a good look at the models that were being portrayed on YA books. And the website that epic reads used to do this experiment is definitely something that I could spend a lot of time wasting.

For example, just for fun, I tried out the most recent photo of myself saved on my computer (took it back in March) and it claimed that I was 26 years old. Totally threw me off because usually I get mistaken for 18-20 years old. (I’m 22, by the way.)

And what was even more hilarious was that I tested the profile picture of my blog and it claimed that I was 36. Man, lighting is everything, I guess. (This was the oldest that it pegged me as. Every other time was in the twenties.)

So clearly how-old.net has some work to do, but it was still fun.

3.) TIME’s Answers issue

I’m a curious person by nature, so reading all these answers to questions that I never really thought about asking were very enlightening.

Like, I never thought about space having a smell. (It supposedly smells like seared steak or a hot meal.) Or that America’s greatest personal fear is not public speaking, but walking alone at night.

4.) The importance of being disconnected

I was browsing this blog the other day (I “know” him from a youtube channel that I’m subscribed to) and this idea totally makes sense. I can’t tell you how many times I would think of something that would contribute to a story that I was working on while I was in the shower. Also, many times after I write creatively for an hour, I have stand up and walk away for ten minutes to just think. Good stuff.



Anyway, to bring you back to my earlier statement…

I realized that I came up with a blog post topic when I was allowing my brain to do other things. Things that made me laugh and ponder and let my mind roam free with a billion other curious questions. I’ve also been busy having a social life for the past few days (crazy, I know), but it’s forced me to take a break from all things writing simply because I just haven’t had time.

So I’ve decided to give myself permission to take a day or two off from working on my current writing project. Instead, I’ll be brainstorming scenes on how to move forward with the story. I mean, it’s not like I have to reach a deadline; I just have a goal of finishing it sometime in the middle of August. I have to stop being so rigid with my schedule.

In conclusion, I’ve learned to take a step back when I’m struggling with Writer’s Block. To give myself a break and then dive back into it as soon as possible.


Unless you’re one of those people who really is on a deadline. To you, I say: Just keep going.



P.S. Special thanks to YA Highway for leading me to find those entertaining websites for number 1 and 2 listed above.