Yes, tomorrow is National Novel Writing Month. I've tried to get hyped, and I kind of am. More than I was last year, anyway. (I was in slight panic mode last year). I don't really have a complete plot. I don't even have three-quarters of a plot. I'm not sure I even have time. But I have a world and a bunch of pens and a notebook that has already been decked out with NaNoWriMo stickers, and... really, what sort of Wrimo would I be if I didn't do NaNo this year? (don't answer that.)
Right, well, this is where the slight panic sets in. I'm not sure I can do it because of time. I keep telling myself that I can work on it - that I can work in the world I've set up for myself (mostly) and that the words will just come. It's happened before. But it hasn't happened in a while. I'm possibly less prepared than I was last year - at least I knew all the character names last year. This year, I keep mixing up Tobias with whatever I named my villain (Joshua? No, he was a protagonist last year. Jericho? No, he was last year's villain, and I don't recycle names. Oh right, his name is Jeremy. Damn you, J-names! Come to think of it, maybe I should change his name...); also, I can't keep my character sheets straight. For example, I can't find the definitive sheet that I have (I KNOW I WROTE ONE UP) that says the Players' names, strengths, and weaknesses. Gah!
Also, I tried to get into the NaNoWriMo spirit by putting a countdown on the whiteboard on the door of my room. Every day - sometimes multiple times a day - someone would come and erase the number. With 9 days to go, someone erased it and drew a penis.
So, this is my life right now. Will be back tomorrow to begin the hooliganry!
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Friday, October 25, 2013
NaNo Building - Episode 1: WHAT IS A PLAYER?
In an attempt to maybe motivate myself to try and get the rest of my NaNo universe sorted out, I'm going to post some mechanics of my world here.
This first installment covers what and who exactly the Players are.
This first installment covers what and who exactly the Players are.
Simply put, a Player is a person whose soul isn’t quite
ready for Heaven, but the soul is nowhere near bad enough to go to Hell. If the person
chooses, they can go forth and right their wrongs and eventually be redeemed. If they choose not to go forth and be redeemed, they will be doomed to roam the Earth as a homeless, wandering soul... *cue soul-wandering Purgatory legends, etc*
If they choose to be redeemed, they will be cast as an Archetype in 1,001 tales. The Archetype they are cast in is one of two things, depending on the lessons needed to be learned: first, the Archetype can be opposite from the person's personality in life, to show them that what they could have done; second, the Archetype can be similar to the person's personality in life, to show them what they were doing wrong. The first instance tends to be a Hero or Villain's Turncoat Sidekick; the second, the Villain or the Hero's Sidekick (turncoat or not).
That's the basic mechanics of who they are and the start of what they do. Next Time: how you get there and what your gender is.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
An Update (and apologies for my lack of posts)
Once again, I must apologize for my lack of posts. I should really develop some sort of schedule for doing this if I want to keep it up...
Anyway, classes are going well. We got back from fall break earlier this week, which meant that there were only three days of classes. WOOHOO SHORT SCHOOL WEEK! It's now homecoming weekend, and in celebration, I'm doing... nothing of consequence.
Actually, that's not really true. A friend of mine has released his first official album (It's called "The Turn of Autumn," and you should ALL GO LOOK IT UP ON ITUNES), and the school has decided that they're throwing him a release party during homecoming weekend. YAY PUBLICITY! (I would like to point out that our school is tiny, and my friend is really active in the school community, so I'm pretty sure the combination of the two resulted in the shindig in an hour).
In terms of actual academics, I have finally figured out the full capacity of Classical Greek verbs. Actually, that's not really true. I still need to keep a verb sheet with me at all times during the difficult translations, but the point remains that I have a better idea of Classical Greek verbs than I used to. In the midst of conjugating verbs, we somehow got onto the topic of Oreos and the correct way to consume them. The only guy in class yesterday apparently eats his Oreos by splitting the cookie, sticking a fork in the cream, and dunking it in milk. The conclusion of the class was that Greek verbs are difficult and that the school should offer an Oreos and Ethics class. (If there were such a thing as an Oreos and Ethics class, I would most certainly take it).
Speaking of classes I may or may not take, class registration is coming up soon. My chance to sign up comes in ten days; in order to get all the classes I want, I'll be up half an hour early in order to actually get a spot. Like the Hunger Games, the motto of class registration on all college campuses is "May the Odds be Ever in your Favor." Why? Well, the first half-hour is total mayhem and only those of the strongest Internet and fastest clicks will survive to reap the benefits of things like no morning classes, no classes on Fridays, and the ability to graduate on time.
Right now, the classes that are actually interesting and also pertain to my major are all on Tuesdays and Thursdays; unless I get one or both of my backups, I'm going to have zero classes two days a week (choir is on Mondays). Luckily, one of those days is a FRIDAY!! Even if I do get the backup that's a MWF class, I'll still be out of class by 10:20, so that's really nice.
In a complete change of subject, I've started working out the mechanics of the world I'll be writing in for National Novel Writing Month this year. This is something I've never actually had to do; normally, I work in a realm based out of the standard fantasy world (Middle Earth is the basis for the standards); this time, however, I'm almost entirely leaving fantasy (but not quite entirely). I'm working in a world that's a part of a Purgatory - the souls go there in order to redeem themselves somewhat in order to go to Heaven. They do this by performing the same sort of Archetype (Naïve Female Heroine, Dashing Love Interest, Elderly Mentor, etc); the catch is that the Archetype is a type of person that is completely different from what the person was in life. This raises questions like "what do you do to get into this level of purgatory?" and "how do you get assigned your gender, age, and genre?" and "is this world actually workable?" and "would excessive college drunkenness count on your soul's permanent record?" (I remind you that it's homecoming weekend. There are overage alumni around. Need I say more?)
Anyhow, I need to peace out to think about these important structural questions. I may be back soon to explain them all to you. I may not.
Either way, I'll try to be back for at least most of November, so that's a thing.
Farewell!
Anyway, classes are going well. We got back from fall break earlier this week, which meant that there were only three days of classes. WOOHOO SHORT SCHOOL WEEK! It's now homecoming weekend, and in celebration, I'm doing... nothing of consequence.
Actually, that's not really true. A friend of mine has released his first official album (It's called "The Turn of Autumn," and you should ALL GO LOOK IT UP ON ITUNES), and the school has decided that they're throwing him a release party during homecoming weekend. YAY PUBLICITY! (I would like to point out that our school is tiny, and my friend is really active in the school community, so I'm pretty sure the combination of the two resulted in the shindig in an hour).
In terms of actual academics, I have finally figured out the full capacity of Classical Greek verbs. Actually, that's not really true. I still need to keep a verb sheet with me at all times during the difficult translations, but the point remains that I have a better idea of Classical Greek verbs than I used to. In the midst of conjugating verbs, we somehow got onto the topic of Oreos and the correct way to consume them. The only guy in class yesterday apparently eats his Oreos by splitting the cookie, sticking a fork in the cream, and dunking it in milk. The conclusion of the class was that Greek verbs are difficult and that the school should offer an Oreos and Ethics class. (If there were such a thing as an Oreos and Ethics class, I would most certainly take it).
Speaking of classes I may or may not take, class registration is coming up soon. My chance to sign up comes in ten days; in order to get all the classes I want, I'll be up half an hour early in order to actually get a spot. Like the Hunger Games, the motto of class registration on all college campuses is "May the Odds be Ever in your Favor." Why? Well, the first half-hour is total mayhem and only those of the strongest Internet and fastest clicks will survive to reap the benefits of things like no morning classes, no classes on Fridays, and the ability to graduate on time.
Right now, the classes that are actually interesting and also pertain to my major are all on Tuesdays and Thursdays; unless I get one or both of my backups, I'm going to have zero classes two days a week (choir is on Mondays). Luckily, one of those days is a FRIDAY!! Even if I do get the backup that's a MWF class, I'll still be out of class by 10:20, so that's really nice.
In a complete change of subject, I've started working out the mechanics of the world I'll be writing in for National Novel Writing Month this year. This is something I've never actually had to do; normally, I work in a realm based out of the standard fantasy world (Middle Earth is the basis for the standards); this time, however, I'm almost entirely leaving fantasy (but not quite entirely). I'm working in a world that's a part of a Purgatory - the souls go there in order to redeem themselves somewhat in order to go to Heaven. They do this by performing the same sort of Archetype (Naïve Female Heroine, Dashing Love Interest, Elderly Mentor, etc); the catch is that the Archetype is a type of person that is completely different from what the person was in life. This raises questions like "what do you do to get into this level of purgatory?" and "how do you get assigned your gender, age, and genre?" and "is this world actually workable?" and "would excessive college drunkenness count on your soul's permanent record?" (I remind you that it's homecoming weekend. There are overage alumni around. Need I say more?)
Anyhow, I need to peace out to think about these important structural questions. I may be back soon to explain them all to you. I may not.
Either way, I'll try to be back for at least most of November, so that's a thing.
Farewell!
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Fall and Such
Greetings!
First of all, I owe you several apologies - first, for not finishing typing up the Turkey journals (I'll try and get to that soon, but I can make no certain promises); second, for not posting at all in September aside from those entries. I know I should do better than that, and I'll certainly try, but I make no promises as to consistency of posts from here on out.
Secondly, An Update! The first month of sophomore year has gone fairly well. There were a few ups and several downs that have, thankfully, sorted themselves out. Right now, I should be working on reading for my honors class (which focuses on the works of Cormac McCarthy), but, as you can tell, I'm not. (For those who are about to yell at me for my procrastination, I would like to inform you that I still have until 12:00 to do this, because 12:00 is when I actually have to start classes today).
My classes are thus far actually kind of interesting. The economics course I'm in is the sort of thing where you take the course to understand basic principles, but probably shouldn't switch your major because of it (I mean, unless you really wanted to).
Ancient Greek is... well... Ancient Greek. Now that we're in Intermediate instead of Beginning Greek, the Intermediate students need to tutor the Beginning students. My tutorees are cool; one picks things up fairly quickly and is taking it for her major; the other one is not taking it for her major and picks it up more slowly. I enjoy working with them well enough, but I'm prouder of the second student, because she's still trudging through it despite the difficulty.
Math Modeling is kind of easy, to be honest. It's picking up a bit now, but for the first month I was able to dance through the problems without much difficulty. This is the sort of math that's a little bit above algebra; maybe it's easy to me because anything below AB calculus (which I took senior year of high school) feels like grade school.
The honors class I'm in, as I stated previously, focuses on Cormac McCarthy's works. The first week, we read a bit of Suttree; since then, we've finished All the Pretty Horses and now we're working on Cities on the Plain (we skipped the middle book in The Border Trilogy for some reason). It's a lot of reading - we have 75 pages and a journal entry due each class - but it's interesting stuff. The difficulty in this is that it's very much a discussion-based course, and I don't do very well in discussion-based courses. I don't really feel like I have anything to say; if I do come up with something, it never feels like it's relevant to the book at hand.
In addition to my actual credit-related courses, I'm also taking choir (which is great fun, because CHOIR) and juggling. Juggling is harder than you'd expect; after a month of class, I can barely do the three-ball cascade. Meanwhile, a good chunk of my peers are successfully pausing in the middle of their cascades and doing them overhand and successfully juggling multiple clubs (I can do one... at a time...) and other crazy things like that.
Anyhow, it's now time for me to sign off and actually start doing work. I shall post... hopefully more often than I did last month.
HUZZAH!
First of all, I owe you several apologies - first, for not finishing typing up the Turkey journals (I'll try and get to that soon, but I can make no certain promises); second, for not posting at all in September aside from those entries. I know I should do better than that, and I'll certainly try, but I make no promises as to consistency of posts from here on out.
Secondly, An Update! The first month of sophomore year has gone fairly well. There were a few ups and several downs that have, thankfully, sorted themselves out. Right now, I should be working on reading for my honors class (which focuses on the works of Cormac McCarthy), but, as you can tell, I'm not. (For those who are about to yell at me for my procrastination, I would like to inform you that I still have until 12:00 to do this, because 12:00 is when I actually have to start classes today).
My classes are thus far actually kind of interesting. The economics course I'm in is the sort of thing where you take the course to understand basic principles, but probably shouldn't switch your major because of it (I mean, unless you really wanted to).
Ancient Greek is... well... Ancient Greek. Now that we're in Intermediate instead of Beginning Greek, the Intermediate students need to tutor the Beginning students. My tutorees are cool; one picks things up fairly quickly and is taking it for her major; the other one is not taking it for her major and picks it up more slowly. I enjoy working with them well enough, but I'm prouder of the second student, because she's still trudging through it despite the difficulty.
Math Modeling is kind of easy, to be honest. It's picking up a bit now, but for the first month I was able to dance through the problems without much difficulty. This is the sort of math that's a little bit above algebra; maybe it's easy to me because anything below AB calculus (which I took senior year of high school) feels like grade school.
The honors class I'm in, as I stated previously, focuses on Cormac McCarthy's works. The first week, we read a bit of Suttree; since then, we've finished All the Pretty Horses and now we're working on Cities on the Plain (we skipped the middle book in The Border Trilogy for some reason). It's a lot of reading - we have 75 pages and a journal entry due each class - but it's interesting stuff. The difficulty in this is that it's very much a discussion-based course, and I don't do very well in discussion-based courses. I don't really feel like I have anything to say; if I do come up with something, it never feels like it's relevant to the book at hand.
In addition to my actual credit-related courses, I'm also taking choir (which is great fun, because CHOIR) and juggling. Juggling is harder than you'd expect; after a month of class, I can barely do the three-ball cascade. Meanwhile, a good chunk of my peers are successfully pausing in the middle of their cascades and doing them overhand and successfully juggling multiple clubs (I can do one... at a time...) and other crazy things like that.
Anyhow, it's now time for me to sign off and actually start doing work. I shall post... hopefully more often than I did last month.
HUZZAH!
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