Um, hi.

I wrote a novel.

In one month.

Oh my god.

nov. 20th

I've officially written more of this story than anything else in my entire life.

Forty thousand and two words, approx. 73 pages---any way you want to put it, this is more than I've EVER done before.

My closest nanowrimo attempt reached 40,000 words at something like 11PM on the 30th. It was nowhere near the end of the story---I'd barely even gotten to the beginning!---and there was no way I was going to finish it.

And now here I am, ten days from the end of the month and with only ten thousand words left to write, officially.

Of course, just like before, I'm nowhere NEAR the end. I guess old habits die hard. *grin* This also MIGHT have something to do with the fact that I JUST figured out that this story is actually a trilogy, and not one book. (Thanks a lot for giving me the heads up on that one, Siarl! I never expected the Fens to become such a huge part of the story!) This time, though, I really want to finish. And I'm just going to write through the years that will eventually be the second book in maybe five pages, and get to the important bits. I don't have enough time to properly finish it, but I'm going to finish it somehow.

That's going to be the hardest thing for me---I hate cutting things down, and there are so many character relationships I want to develop in that period. But you know what? I'm writing a novel in a month. This is a rough draft, and it's not going to be perfect---so I'm just going to make myself shut up and write at least a bare bones version of the ending. I can edit it later; I will edit it later. But dammit, I am going to finish this thing. This year I am going to do it.

And you know what? I'm completely and totally in love with my story. For once I am writing a story for myself first---and the writing is awful, truly terrible, and filled with dreadful cliches and I'm just itching to sit down with it properly and fix it, but---I'm crazy for this story and I can't wait to find out what happens. And in between all the gross bits there are some beautiful lines and characters that I love beyond reason.

I'm a writer, and for god's sake, nothing I ever do will be perfect---but this imperfection right here feels perfect enough to me, right now, and I'm really happy.

And wasn't THAT a cheesy line. :)

Edit: lolol the first time I typed this I wrote "nothing I ever do will be prefect". Ahaha irony.

NaNoWriMo!

Yes, it's that time again!

What time, Zaz? I hear you chant. (Okay, bear with me here, I'm having a good day.)

It's time to try and write a 50,000 word novel in one month again!

Oh yes, I am crazy. My first year of college and WHAT am I doing? Trying to write a novel, during November, which inevitably ends up being the busiest month of my year. Guess what I've got next week? A MIDTERM! YAYYY!

But I love November, I honestly do. It's exciting, somehow. It feels like a month of new beginnings, a time to try things. If I fail, at least I've gone for something, you know? At least I'm not just sitting out my life doing absolutely nothing.

And, for once, I'm ahead of schedule! I want to be cautious about this, but it feels so good to be actually where I wanted to be at this point. 11943 words! I just wanted to be at ten thousand today, and I'm almost at twelve, even though I'm violating the technical rules by working on something I've "started", if 189 words counts as a start. But I'm (obviously) not counting those words towards my final count, and as the reason stated for that rule is "we don't want you starting anything where you're too attached to the characters", I don't really see it as violating it at its heart, since I started without feeling too much attachment to the characters, and they've already changed a bunch of times. Plus, the ideas attached to those 189 words were just things I loved too much not to try. It's something I'm really just writing for myself, and it's making me happy.

Of course, there will be BAD days. This I know; I've learned by now that writing is not something that just happens smoothly and easily (even if it may feel like that right now). There will inevitably be that one day where I break down and go, "all right, that's it, this novel sucks and I am a terrible writer." But this time, instead of trying afterwards to pick it up with brilliance again, I'm going to try and just write some CRAP and get beyond that point and finish.

We'll see what happens, and you, faithful readers of this blog---by which I mean maybe 1.5 people---will get to hear all about it!

So right now I'm just feeling good about it. My character's shifting a bit and I'm having tense problems and it's WAY too wordy, but wonderful things are happening on a very, very small scale. And I have high hopes for finishing this one. Bet you this---it's not even cockiness, but this satisfaction---will come back to bite me in the ass soon enough, but now? I feel good.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I miss home with all the crazy decorations, today. And Halloween with all my friends.

Just a few random tidbits from today . . .

-Apparently, I yelled out something like "lantern" in my sleep last night. I . . . have no idea where this came from. I do not remember any dreams about lanterns. I didn't think the word lanterns once yesterday. And yet, I work my roommate Elizabeth up this morning at 5 when I yelled "LANTERN!" in my sleep. My mind is obviously a strange, strange place.

-GAH Linguistics midterm. Okay, 88% is a decent score. I guess. Maybe it's the Lowell syndrome in me, but I wanted to do better. ALSO, in grade-point scale, 88% is a 3.3. WTF? 3-point-bloody-three? I miss three questions and I get a three-point-bloody three? GAHHHHH. On the other hand I feel sort of bad for being pissed off about this because Elizabeth got an unfair grade on her essay for sociology because of the curve. (Three-hundred people in her class got between 2.3 and 2.7 because of this stupid curve, which she was above.) But stilllll . . . *whine*

-Even though I was kind of pissed off about this, something made me smile hugely as I was walking to Linguistics lecture (which I came so so close to skipping because I am tired). There were a couple of people waving signs and yelling about Jesus and how God demands that I repent in Red Square this afternoon. While I seriously don't have anything against smart religious people, I do have something against stupid people that yell and tell me someone is DEMANDING I do something I don't agree with, with the implication that my soul is damned to eternal hellfire if I don't, etc. etc. Nevertheless, I wasn't really annoyed so much as "oh, it's the yelling people again; I'm just going to walk over here, not bother them, and tune them out."

Then I noticed that, standing a few feet away from them, there were an equal number of people dressed as pirates, not yelling and calmly holding signs with the Flying Spaghetti Monster on them and passing out pamphlets.

SO awesome. I just have one thing to say: Ramen, my brothers and sisters, Ramen. And also thank you for making me grin so widely.

-I am having a craving for ridiculous turn-of-the-century children's literature. I could not tell you why this is, but I finished Little Lord Fauntleroy last night and now I just want more of the same. I'm such a weirdo.

-I haven't been sleeping well lately.

-It's almost NOVEMBER!!! and I'm excited. Why? Why, nanowrimo.org, my friends . . .

-All I want to do today is write. So I think I shall do that now, instead of doing math homework like a smart person.

Okay, I'll admit it. I bought more books. But how can I help it? The bookstore is three blocks away. Three. Also, if I go to the bookstore, I can stop by the gyro place on the way back. The delicious gyro place which makes practically the most delicious gyros ever.

I'm sorry, even a saint couldn't resist.

St. Thomas of Aquinas is backing me up on this one.

My dear blog, I've been neglecting you. In my defense, I was sick and had a midterm in math on Thursday, but I shall vow to attempt to write in you more often. Looking it over, there wasn't that much to say about the Spice Girls, so I'll skip them for now.

I studied a lot for my math midterm, and I don't feel like I got anything wrong, which, I'm sure, is completely untrue. I'm sure I screwed up something. We get them back tomorrow and ahhh I'm going crazy with the desire to know how I did for sure.

Speaking of midterms, I've got another one in linguistics on Monday. Yeeuch. At the moment linguistics is being sort of interesting, but I'm eager to get past learning the mechanics that you have to know, and onto the really interesting stuff. I might not hit that until the upper levels though. I guess we'll see. In any case the midterm will probably not be ridiculously hard, so I'm not extremely worried about that.

Finnish makes me remember that I miss Japanese. I've got to see about taking that next quarter. I miss the cadences spread over my tongue like dyed silk, the precise words spilling out from my mouth. It's funny how much a language can get in your blood. Sometimes all I want to do is rattle things off in Japanese like I used to, though I'm already starting to lose bits of it. I don't want to let that happen, so I'm definitely going to try and take it next quarter. We'll see what happens.

Let's see, what else . . . today I was tired (I'm just at the edge of recovering from my sickness) so I took a nap in between math and linguistics lecture, which was nice. I was feeling a little eh afterwards, but I took my camera with me on a whim, and went shooting after linguistics lecture. My god, I love photography. Writing soothes that part of me that can't stop devouring words, and photography calms the part of me that loves shapes and colors, and can't stop staring at trees. Ashley, one of my figmates, makes fun of me good-naturedly for how much I say, "Look at that, it's beautiful!" I can't help it though; things catch my eye and I want to share them. Photography, I think, is one way of doing that. (Ms. Canepa and Ms. Mitchell would burn me at the stake for saying "I think", but this is my blog so I can do whatever I want. Mwahaha.)

Umm there was one more thing . . . oh yes. A cute boy with a skateboard told me he liked my jacket (the purple velvet blazer from Camden), and that if it didn't "suit me so well", he'd probably try to buy it off me.

Eee. I'll never see him again, but it still made me smile uncontrollably.

I went to see a midnight showing of Spice World tonight with my roommate Elizabeth and two girls from the fifth floor. It was awesome. Were there hilarious drunk frat people on the bus, you ask? Were there people dressed up at the theatre? Was there a guy drumming on the sidewalk in the rain at 1.30 in the morning? Yes, yes, and yes. All this and more in tomorrow's post---I'm hella tired, and going to sleep now.

Arrgarrargarrargarrarga bleh bleh bleh. <-- New hit single in Qwerty, I hear. But also how my last few days have been going. This morning I got a visit from my Aunt Flo, so I guess it's not surprising. Ugh. In some ways it's nice to have an excuse to blame the ehness on, but some small peevish part of me wants to shout, "No! I'm in a bad mood because things suck, not because it's that time of the month!" Sigh.

To be fair, not everything sucks, but my math homework does. It takes forever, because I'm trying to get it done ASAP so it's not hanging over my head. Unfortunately, it's been a while since I've done math, so it takes me a while to remember things like the distance formula exist. Or the quadratic formula. It took six tries on one problem before I realized I was getting it wrong because I was squaring improperly. Good job, Zaz.

Also, my TA for math sucks. I feel bad for feeling that way, because he's one of those nervous teachers that want to please you badly, but for whatever reason, can't. He's a tall, rail-thin Chinese man who wears glasses and has that perpetual apprehensive hunch that nervous teachers often get. He has a thick accent, which by itself doesn't mean anything---for example, my Linguistics TA has a thick accent and is incredibly intelligent, passionate about her subject, and (most importantly) eloquent. Coupled with hesitance and a tendency to stop for too-long periods of time to check if we're following him, it's not so great. Basically we went over one part of a semi-complex problem in 40 minutes. I had about three others I had questions on, which it would have been nice to go over. Oh well. Hopefully as the quarter goes on he'll get more confident, because I'm sure he knows his subject well, and he seems very nice, albeit shy. I'm rooting for him to get better! (But I'm too cynical to think he actually will. Sigh.)

I just noticed my Finnish textbook has seagulls on it . . . what? Are seagulls like . . . the national bird of Finland, or that just random? Okay, I just checked wikipedia, and no, Finland and seagulls are not their national bird. There IS, however, a Finnish band called "Damn Seagulls".

Oh, Finland. Your vowels vex me, but you're stealing my heart.

Well, here I am, trying once again to chronicle my life on teh intarwebs. Hopefully this time I'll be more successful than I was with my livejournal, which basically functioned as a place to whine. This will be . . . er, well, a place to whine, but also a place to write about my life as a college freshman. (Which sounds like a dumb after-school drama. Stupid after-school specials, stealing all my great original phrases for their silly little shows!)

SO! Today the thing I am thinking about the most is how I need to find a different way in which to sit at this desk. It has one of those pull-out second layers, where you can write or do other random stuff. Personally, I've been using it to a) do my precal hw while IMing and b) rest my elbows on as I type at la computadora. But I have recently discovered this is a bad idea, because I think I'm getting bruises on my elbows. Yep, that's right. You think they're called bruises when they're on your elbows? I don't know---in any case, they hurt. Mission of the day: fix this by changing position! (Bruised elbows hurt surprisingly much.)

Other thoughts on today: dammit, I'm being antisocial again. I kind of want to go out and sit in the lounge or something, but ack . . . no. I'm sure everyone thinks I'm a troglodyte for this, especially my roommate's sort-of-not-really-yet-boyfriend-from-across-the-hall, because every time he comes in here, I'm just sitting at my desk, in the same place. He's sure to pass on the word about that creepy curly-haired girl in room 415 who never leaves. Blagh.

Maybe I can muster the social energy to go into the lounge later. *sigh* I miss having friends to do stuff with. This is the part of freshman years I hate: you always have to start right from the beginning. This is, in some ways, a blessing, but also can be really difficult. At the moment it's being really difficult. I just don't feel like doing anything. Maybe I'm just tired.

Oh well, at least I'm going to force myself to go outside today to get my book that is now at Suzzallo's pickup desk. I'll get to see if I want to learn stenography forrealz! I'm excited to see the book! Also, it's grey and rainy outside, which makes me happyyy. Yay rain!