The Closing

So this is my second-to-last night staying in my freshman dorm, and it feels really strange. I have only somewhat dared to start packing yet, which is sort of worrying, but I still have all of tomorrow afternoon!
Anyway, it has been a crazy year, and I can hardly believe that I am pretty much done with my first year of college.  I'm glad I chose the school I did, even though it is sometimes not what I expected (or too much as I expected).

For all my friends (who probably don't read this) who are going to college next year, I give you Wild Card's Top Ten List of Things You Should Know For College:

1. Be nice to your roommate.  You're going to have to deal with them all year.  If you wind up not getting along and having to switch to a different room, then that's how things go, but that should not stop you from being nice to them.  If you're switching rooms because of drama, deal with it as amiably as possible, and talk to them about it.  It could be that they don't know their stupid habit is annoying you, and if it's something that can be eliminated, then they'll know that they should work on it.
2. Don't keep too much unsealed food in the room.  You will get mice, which will stick around long enough for you to grow fond of and name (ours is named Indy, because we live in Jones Hall - Indiana Jones).  Anyway, the mice can get all over your bed and poop where you may or may not want it (this hasn't happened to me, but Indy made two attempts on my bed today, which leads me to wonder where else he's been).
3. Be familiar with your hallmates. From experience, there may come an awkward moment when a group member in a class says, "Hey, since we live across the hall from each other, want to work on the revisions together?" Do not be that person, as I was, who does not realize who their hallmates are until halfway through spring semester.  Also, if you need to tell someone to shut up because you have a final or a midterm or whatever, they'll probably listen to you more if you know them.  (this may not apply if they're drunk.)
4. If you do not want to drink, you do not have to drink.  There will always be the people who will watch Stargate, Dr. Who, or Star Trek with you on a Friday night without alcohol.  Though these people are what are generally called 'nerds,' the difference between these people and the people who get drunk at fraternity parties every night is that the nerds will remember the stupid puns they made.
5. If you really want to join a social Greek organization, consider not going Greek right away.  If it's something that you feel is part of the essential college experience, and you couldn't bear to rush as a sophomore, I'm not telling you to not go Greek right away - just that maybe you can make friends without the help of the social organizations.
6. If you really think social Greek organizations are dumb - go through rush just to see what it's like.  I came into college saying that social sororities are stupid, and that I could never hang out with someone in Greek life.  After going through rush, I do have a better understanding of what it's like to be part of a social Greek organization.  I didn't get a bid, I don't really want one, and I'm probably not going to go back for one, but I'm glad that I went through it.  The biggest thing I learned is that yes, there are the sororities that are better known for being ditzy or more of the 'party house' (I geeked out about DnD at this house... there's a reason I didn't get asked back), but there are also the houses that are super down-to-earth.  Part of the reason I didn't want to go through rush is because I thought I would be the only non-blonde and certainly the only nerd there, but my host at the first house I went to turned out to be a huge Star Wars fan. (That made stuff a lot easier.)
7. If you're interested in going Greek but don't want to do something social, there are probably going to be honor societies and service fraternities (like Alpha Phi Omega).  If it's an honor society, you're going to have to work up your major GPA and probably not going to get in your first year, but that's always an option.  Additionally, service-based organizations are easy ways to bond with people because you can easily say that you can HELPED PEOPLE TOGETHER! HUZZAH!
8. In the realm of academics, do study.  You'll probably have entire spans of afternoons free, which are there for you to keep your grades up.  If you don't keep up your GPA, you may be asked to not return to the school.  College is not there for you to get drunk all the time.  If drinking is your thing, don't be dumb about it.  Doing Tipsy Tuesday, Wasted Wednesday, Thirsty Thursday, and the regular weekend drinking is perhaps the stupidest thing you can do for your GPA (it also puts you on the fast track for being an alcoholic).
9. In terms of group projects, DO YOUR WORK.  If you can't make it to the group meetings, LET PEOPLE KNOW.  Don't be that one kid who shows up late or not at all without a good excuse.  Good excuses include work, sports you can't get out of, class, or a paper that is 20% done and due in the morning.  Bad excuses include everything else.
10. Talk to everyone.  You meet so many new people in the first three weeks of school than you might in the entire rest of the year put together that it's easy to get kind of confused and mixing up names and faces and phone numbers, but it'll be worth it.  Everyone else is going to mix up some faces and names and stuff, too, so you're not alone.  You'll have friends, and if you wind up not hanging out with a lot of people you hang out with in the beginning of the year, you'll probably wind up with a few people that you're on good terms with in case you wind up in a group project together or something.



I'll probably make more of these lists at some point, but here's some tips for now.

Going Back

This month, I want to work on typing up and editing my NaNo2011 novel (the one I wrote during November of my senior year; it is, in my opinion, one of the better novels I have written.  It is also the only one that has an ending that is connected to the rest of the story.  NaNo2012 has an end, but I have a scene or two to add before that).  It is going to be rather interesting, I have to admit.  I have not seen most of this novel in quite a long time - the middle bits tend to get ignored in the grand scheme of typing when there are a lot of false-starts.  Since this novel is in roughly the 100,000-115,000 word range, this is going to take a long time, and I hope I can get through it.

I think there are three important things I will need to focus on when I start editing:
1. Work out characters' back-stories more, especially the principal characters.  It is probably going to take a while, but if I know their stories better, I will be able to work out whether they would actually do or say something, or whether I was just putting a certain statement in to be punny or tack onto my word count (it's been known to happen).
2. Work on general plot arc/ subplot arc.  General plot arc comes first, then the subplots.  I made a list the other day: there are five plots in this novel (one main and four subplots).  I need to work out which should stay and which should go (or perhaps should just fade, but not leave entirely).  From there, I need to...
3. ... Work on scene selection.  I think this is going to be the hardest part of the entire thing, which is why I'm going to be doing it last (it's also last because I can't really do it well if I don't have 1 and 2 sorted out properly).  This step is where I add and subtract scenes to make sure it's actually going to work in the general plot.  I predict that my word count will shrink rapidly if I work on this step for a long time, and go thoroughly through step 2 (though step 1 might add a few scenes).

At this point, I need to stop thinking in terms of word count and start thinking in terms of MAKE THIS A BETTER NOVEL.  I am no longer in NaNoWriMo: I'm in WiCaEdMo (Wild Card Editing Month), in which word count and word quality are not the same thing (they never were, but the NaNo mindset tends to force you to ignore that).

Also, this is not an April Fool's Joke.

On writing things

I'm pretty sure I'm brain-dead for ideas right now, and it's not fun.  I have to write a script for my First-Year course, as I mentioned, and five pages are due later this week.
The five pages aren't the problem.  The problem lies in the fact that I'm not really sure where I want to go from those five pages.  I have a general idea of where I want to go, but I keep wanting to change it and fix it and make it not suck as much as I sometimes think it does.
This, I believe, is what is called the 'creative process.'  Or, rather, 'procrastinating on the creative process.'  Once you get the idea, go for it, I'd say.  If you stop, you start to doubt yourself.

So, as a piece of advice for all those who are undertaking any sort of major writing project in the immediate future: start, don't stop, and keep going at all costs.  Your muse will thank you later.  Even though your sleep cycle may be messed up (as mine currently is, thanks to a Greek test), and your writing might suck, it's easier to work on continuity and such if you have everything there.

On that note, I need to go to the library and study some Greek and write a play.

Final Weeks

My J-term class ends on Friday. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I'm excited that we're going to be on break and that spring semester is coming, but I'll be sad to see the excessive amount of time leave.
More relevant, I'm also not sure how I'm going to feel about the final product of the class. If there's one thing I've learned about my own writing process, it's that the editing part is never done. I have a measly seven scenes - I originally had eight, but one got cut before it got typed up - but all of the editing won't help my nerves, in the end.  Does the pacing work?  Are the characters relatable?  Will anyone be able to pronounce Siofra's real name?  Am I using too many cliches?  Is the timing right?  The list goes on.

I know the reason that I'm getting nervous about it, too - more nervous than my other writing.  It has nothing to do with my peers accepting it as decent work - that was what I had issue with at the beginning of the course, a long time ago when I only had to write five pages.  At this point, the trouble is me accepting it as decent work.  When you spend just as much time editing a piece as you do writing it (more time, actually), you tend to worry about it.  If this were a longer work, it would be like a child.  You want the best for it, but sometimes it gives you hell.  A lot of times, actually.  Some things you love to go over, other things you fear to even glance at.

Though this is not my longest work - it barely counts as 30 pages, even with the title page, the character list, and the page-happy formatting that a script must follow - it's still causing me a bit of worry.  In comparison to some other people in the class, I think I'll do fine, and I don't mind how it's written, but sometimes I wonder how it would turn out if I had done things differently.  I could have killed my main character.  I could have made the future relationship of two of my characters less ambiguous.  I could have made one character more sympathetic to the antagonistic party.

When it comes to it, though, I'm glad I had the chance to do this course.  It taught me how not to format a script, and it taught me what to look at and what to ask when going through the editing process.

Day 27: the end is nigh, but not my wordcount

NaNoWriMo will be drawing to a close in a few days, and my plot line may or may not be doing the same thing.  My word count, on the other hand, is in dire need of help.  I am at fewer than 40,000 words, which is something that, in years past, I have hit by the 20th of the month.  This is not acceptable, and I need to go and write.
But do I have enough time to his 50,000 words in four days?  Not only that, do I have enough plot?
Well, yes, I do.  A paladin just got possessed by a demon and there is still a showdown to be had.  I don't know if I can fit a hero's journey into this; I just want to hit my word count.
And so I must write.  And write. And write.

And I need to do homework.  And write.
But homework first.
Farewell.

On Finishing

Last night, at 12:17 AM, I finally completed a novel.  I don't know how many words it is, though I know it's about 300 pages (290-something, to be more precise) in my handwriting, and I don't know as of yet how well that translates to typed-up-ness. If I had to hazard a guess based on the infamous things called Math and Approximate Words per Page, the Math tells me it would come out between 103,000 and 115,000, but that seems way off to me.  If it's not way off, then I wrote more than I actually needed to, but that happened in November when I started the thing.
Also, cool thing: Chris Baty acknowledged the existence of the Ending of my novel.  I feel really cool.

Anyhow, onto the real thing:
Though I have written the last words of Romeo's journey in pen, the typing and the editing still needs to happen.  I need to see how many words I actually wrote, at the very least, but then I need to make it sound better than it already is (this is a very, very easy thing to do; it's the first draft, so it's its job to be kind of sucky).  I don't know what I'm going to do with it after I type it up and edit it a bit; maybe I'll edit it some more and then do something with it.  I really don't know.
I guess I could send it to a publisher, but I don't want to yet, because I'm a total amateur and I don't know what I'm doing.

But the significant part is over: the manuscript is written.  I haven't been through the entire process of writing/ editing/ editing/ sending a novel, so I don't know what the hardest part is.  But my personal major roadblock has been knocked down.  HUZZAH!