Shopping Experiences

I had an interesting school supply shopping experience yesterday.
Okay, I wasn't only looking for notebooks. I was also looking for ingredients for soup and an umbrella (I was not looking for these in the same store, mind. I was looking for the umbrella in the same store that I was looking for school supplies, because it was RAINY and I've known that same exact chain to put out umbrellas when it's rainy).
So I got my ingredients. I went to get school supplies. I found the notebooks and pencils easily enough. I went all over the store looking for an umbrella. Were they by the lawn chairs - perhaps to shade the pale vampires from too much sun? Nope. Were they by the school supplies sale aisle? Despite the fact that there were lunchboxes and mascara wands in that same aisle, there was nothing with which to keep your perfect eyelashes dry.
I eventually gave up and went to the counter to actually purchase the notebooks and pencils. Classes start soon; I need this stuff.
As I was leaving, I glanced to my left. There were the umbrellas, tucked away unobtrusively in a corner of the MAKEUP AREA. On a RAINY DAY.
I was unaware that umbrellas were supposed to make my face prettier. I'll keep that in mind the next time I try to purchase an umbrella.

The end of Break

Well, once again, it's super late and I'm unsure about what to post about. Though this week has been quite nice - I've gotten a lot of things together, including summer ideas (the internship didn't work out) and other day-to-day things. I've also caught up on sleep, which is nice. I've also explored a lot of recipes that can be made in mugs. (Lime cake (based off of lemon cake because we don't have lemon extract) is good).

I think the main thing I need to realize is that I need to break out of my shell more. I know that's a really strange statement to make, but I think I've had a perpetual issue with shyness. I don't talk to people sometimes, even though I sometimes want to. I know my mother, at least, is frustrated with it and wants it to stop because it can sometimes hinder things (why don't I just go into the business office and ask about internships? IF I DO, THEN MY STOMACH WILL DROP OUT OF MY BODY AND I WON'T BE ABLE TO DIGEST ANYTHING AND DO YOU REALLY WANT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR MY INEVITABLE DEATH?). Knowing me, I'd much rather do stuff alone - a consequence of being an introvert, I guess.

As an example of how much we differ on this: Earlier in the week, she proposed the idea that I travel a lot over summer break to work on my writing and have some stories to possibly pitch to travel writing companies when I get back. I got excited and started looking into flights to Europe (fun fact: it's apparently really cheap to fly to Oslo).
I was thinking that she wanted me to do the whole discovering-oneself-as-one-treks-alone-and-learning-self-confidence type thing. She had in mind that I would find a tour group for college students and sign up with that. Neither one is wrong, per se - it just depends on what is right for the individual. For my mom, it would be great to have a group that's already planned and ready to go; half the adventure is meeting the people and seeing the sights with the group she's sharing it with. That's perfectly fine - if that's your adventure, go for it.
Though that can be fun, I think I need to take a different. For me, I think it would be a bigger adventure to fly into Oslo without any Norwegian in my head and to figure out my way from there. There's no way to conquer one's fears than to do it when there's absolutely no other choice. Isn't that what my mother wants, anyway - to let me be able to talk to people better?

There's a lot of different ways to travel. Traveling in a group is more of an extrovert's thing; since I'm an introvert, going around alone is better for me. There's nothing wrong with either or even a combination of both. I understand that going in a group allows for more accountability, but sometimes the leap is part of the growth. No matter what I wind up doing this summer, I hope to be able to open up more.

Day 7: Plot switch?

Current Page: 43
Target Page: shut up
Place in Novel: LOOKING FOR HELP! (the characters, I mean. Okay, and me too, kind of)

So many of you may realize that, before NaNo started this year, I had a pretty cool concept.  The issue is, as you may have noticed, that I didn't really have a plot to go with this cool world I had come up with. Thinking back on it, what I did have was way to isolated in one story - I could have followed Jess through all her tales, or something like that.

So my plot this year is in a weird spot. I'm keeping in the Players, to make sure I can use all the words possible, but I'm pretty much separated from what I initially planned. Instead, I'm ripping a bit off of Star Wars and making the novel-ception (because that's technically what it is, strictly speaking... I'll go back and fix it later) the main plot of the story.  From here on out, you'll hear fewer updates on Jess, Marcus, Leo, Tobias, Fabian, and Chelsea, and more updates on Spencer, Keegan, Arthur, Matthias, the Emperor, and Electra.  Just to let you know.

The Second Adventure

Well, it's nearly the end of the summer, and I'm once again off to a wild and awesome place.  This time, I'm going to Istanbul, Turkey.  I'm almost repeating what I did at the beginning of the summer in reverse: I finished finals, sprinted home for two nights and the day in between, and then raced off to Peru for two weeks.  Now, I'm heading off to Turkey for two weeks, then staying at home for two nights and the day in between, and racing off to school to help with freshman move-in.  Funny how that works out.

Anyhow, I'm sorry I haven't posted too much during August (and the fact that I haven't posted much lately in general).  I'll try to work on that as the semester starts up again.  I'm going to do the same thing that I did for Peru: I'm keeping a journal (the same journal with the quotes that I used in Peru), and then typing it up here.  Hopefully it'll all work out.  This time, I've been asked to do a video as well.  AFS, the organization that helped plan the trip, is a foreign exchange program - they help students go to year-long study abroad programs (a good friend of mine just got back from doing a year in Germany), as well as group programs.  Since AFS hasn't yet done a group trip to Turkey, we're the guinea pigs, and I've been asked to maybe do a video about it.  So... yeah.  I'll be doing that as well.

Unfortunately, we're doing a flight at 11:30 PM, which means I need to eat, shower, take out my contact lenses, and prepare for ADVENTURE!!!!!!!!!!!

(Also, my mom gets to go to Troy while the non-adults are doing home-stays. I'm exceptionally jealous of her, but whatever. I'll get over it. Eventually.)

Tomorrow...

I'm going off on another adventure!  Huzzah!
I should be going to bed soon, because I have to wake up early, but I'm excited.  (I'm not excited to wake up.  I'm excited to go to Peru.)
This is partly because I'm going to be going to the Amazon as well as ancient Incan cities (I found this out today.  My mother only specified 'the rainforest,' which could be any sort of lowland in South America).  I'M SO EXCITED GAH.

That is all for now.  I'm sorry I can't be more coherent.

How to Defeat a Dragon

I've discovered something that can be kind of interesting if used right.

My play for FYEC is going to involve dragons and people who contemplate suicide.  I know that much for certain.  However, I making my main character, who attempted suicide multiple times, also fluent in Old Draconic (like Old English for dragons), which brings up the interesting point: will she kill the dragon, negotiate with the dragon, or talk to the dragon in Old Draconic and win it over?  (I'm not telling you this.  I already know.  I've already written that part).

But this proposes an interesting alternative to dragon-slaying.

Yes, yes, I know, fantasy is supposed to teach us that dragons can be beaten.  But 'beaten' does not mean 'killed.'  'Beaten' means foiled, quashed, clobbered - not killed.

As the (modified) saying goes, there's more than one way to clobber a dragon.  Just some of the ways are more difficult than others.  The easy way out is just to kill it (though, considering it's twelve times your size and can breathe fire, might not be that easy); the more difficult way is to talk it out with the dragon; this may be only more difficult because the dragon is older and larger and smarter than you, and a battle of the wits is one of many situations where a Dragon of Old benefits from having a larger brain than you (it means it has plenty of room to think about gold and also clobbering humans).

Of course, talking to the dragon is dumb, according to every movie and fairy tale ever.   Who talks to dragons?  Who gets along with dragons?  WHO CARES ABOUT THE DRAGON'S OPINION?
The dragons care about their opinion, thanks very much.

Character Stuff!

So, over the course of Winter Break, my character sheet for the Dungeons and Dragons campaign that I'm doing at school went missing.  This is rather irritating - not only do I have to re-invent my character from memory, I also lose valuable points (we started at a high level, and I had really good bonuses for my basic stats, which I lost).

This is also an opportunity, however, to reinvent my character.  I have learned through the course of the first episode of the campaign that Bards can be useless in fights and easy to hit (and one of the irritating things is that, in the course of re-doing my character's stats, I lost some Hit Points, so she's easier to hit).  Saturday's session was the last of this episode (think Star Wars), and our DM has said that the characters will have three years between the end of this episode and the start of the next one (the characters will do their own thing for three years; the actual group is going to meet up again in a few weeks).

In that time, we'll have the chance to level up our characters and give them any items we want.  We'll also have the chance to budge around our classes and feats if we want to - this means that my character, Anaïs, is going to get a new job, essentially, in addition to being a Bard, and will learn how to do a lot of cool things.

I used to hate character building, because it's a very tedious process (involving, among other things, a crap-ton of dice rolls and adding those rolls together, and that's just the beginning).  Maybe it's gotten easier because I'm not working from scratch on Anaïs, but it's a lot more fun now that I know a bit more about what I'm doing.

There are several books you can use for character building, but those normally just cover the basic classes, skills, feats, armor, and equipment that you can use.  The Player's Handbook is designed for the new kids who don't know how to set up a character.

Once you start getting the hang of what number gets what bonus on what, you can actually start looking into the cool things on the DnD wiki page, which is actually a lot of fun.

For example, now that I have the ability to cross-class my Bard with something, I decided that I was going to give her a few levels in Fighter - a warrior that's not as stupid as a Barbarian, but will still let me use more weapons and get cooler feats and class skills.  Then, however, I found out that the important stats to a Fighter were the stats that the Bards tended to do without.  Bards rely a lot on Charisma and Intelligence, and can do without Strength and Constitution; Fighters tend to rely more on Strength and Constitution than Charisma.

After looking on the DnD Wiki, I found a homebrew class that I really liked (homebrew means that Wizards of the Coast didn't invent it, but it's developed to work in a DnD-type campaign and available for public use).  It's called a Songblade, and it's a tactician/ fighter; it gives me the weapon usage I need while still using my good stat.

I'm starting to like character work. :)

Snowball fights!

Last night, our campus got its first snow of the season (and of 2013).  Of course, being college students, some of my friends and I went out and had a snowball fight, complete with our friend Editor (her nickname), who is normally very sweet, getting really sassy and one lens on Romanov's (another nickname) glasses getting popped out after she took a snowball to the face.

Possibly the best part of the snowball fight was that it was on and near the football field.  The Dean of Students sent out an email earlier in the day saying that the lights would be left on until 10:00 PM, and that the football field would be a good place for a snowball fight (as opposed to Freshman Village, where a supermassive snowball battle took place last year; it resulted in broken windows, snowballed cop cars, and a few trips to the hospital).  He concluded the email with "YOLO," which kind of made my day.  It also made me wonder about the administration here, but that's another matter.

Anyway, those are the adventures that college students have, in case you were wondering.  I mean, some college students get drunk; some go to frat parties and have sex.  Editor is going to a frat party tonight, but (I think) she's only going because it's on her College Bucket List, and her roommate got invited, so she knows someone there.  We're going to play capture the flag tonight (or maybe it's hide and seek), and I'm pretty sure that it's going to be bigger than last time.

The best college memories are the most innocent: the ones that involve reliving childhood without alcohol, so we'll actually remember them.

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.

Day 16: Over the hump

Well, for better or for worse, it is November 16th, which means we are now slightly more than halfway through NaNoWriMo.  I still need to write today, but, according to my calculations, I need to write around 8 pages (around 3000 words) per day if I want to get to my desired word count goal of 60,000 words.  I do not know if I can pull this off, but I can try.  I nearly did it my first year - I overestimated how many words I could fit on a page, so I set myself the task of doing eight pages a day every day.  I should catch up, if I actually set time aside for myself to do it.
But there comes the issue of whether or not I have enough Plot to reach 60,000 words.  I hope I do; I hope, at least, I can hit 50,000 words.  But my three main characters are about to enter the city of Genesis again, wherein all hell is going to break loose (metaphorically.  That actually happens later.  Maybe.), and then the showdown is going to happen.
I may, to pad my word count, send Storm through the Hero's Journey.  There happens several things after the Showdown during the Hero's Journey, so that can help a lot if I need more words.  If you want to check out the steps of the Hero's Journey, I found a good link here.
If I had to point out where Storm was right now, she'd probably be somewhere in the Road of Trials and Atonement with the Father.  I don't know whether to include the Meeting with the Goddess or the Woman as a Temptress - I don't know whether they are going to be actually relevant to Storm.  Maybe they will.  Maybe they will not.

I guess Storm needs to have more inner turmoil or something.

Will work on that.

Farewell.

Day 7: when the going gets tough, the tough give history lessons

Start Page: 29
Current Page: 32
Target Page: 36 (but, honestly, I'm not going to get to page 36 today, even if I sprint for half an hour)
Pages Between: 4
Location in Plot: I don't even know. I'm sending them to Old Genesis, because that's what they're calling it, because it's the ruins of the city that used to be Genesis before Genesis moved because of some catastrophe that I have yet to come up with.  I have no idea how this relates to the idea of "trumping Jericho," but right now, I just wanted to send them to a ruined city, so I did.  I'm the author.  I do what I want.

Anyhow, I guess today's lesson, kids, is to be willing to fly by the seat of your pants, because sometimes it's crazy fun to do it and can result in something kind of cool, even if it's really confusing and has no apparent connection to the overall goal of what you're trying to do.
I'm still waiting for the 'fun and will be relevant in the future' part of it.
I'll wake up and do it tomorrow morning before East Asia.
I still can't believe my friend is 2,000 words ahead of me.
Actually, I can.  I should be where she is right now.  I'm ahead of the NaNo suggested word count, but that by no means says I'm on track for where I want me to be.  I need a free Saturday or something, except free Saturdays are not a thing.  They're for sleeping and doing laundry and homework (yes, I'm weird, I do homework on Saturdays.  When else am I going to do anything worthwhile academically?  I'd get nothing done otherwise).
Anyway, I need sleep.  I'm determined to catch up to her.  This needs to happen, if only for my own peace of mind.  Right now, I'm kind of in panic mode because I feel like I'm failing at NaNoWriMo.  It is only partly to do with my friend's word count.  She's at 14,770.  I'm at 12,000.  I normally write 2,000 words a day, which means she is farther ahead of me than I would like, and I am not okay with this.  I am not okay with it at all.
Time to re-work how I write and when I do my homework.
But not right now. I'm too tired right now.

NaNo Day Five: Back from Tour Behind

Current Page: 21
Target Page: 30
Pages Today: .5
Pages Left: 9
Location in Story: unprecedented argument between crown prince and villain, in an attempt to discern why, exactly, the villain doesn't like half-elves.  Apparently, he doesn't know, either, because he's not saying anything.

Got back from choir tour last night with a shot voice and reasonable word count.  I was on track to finish the month at 50,000, not 60,000 as I had originally intended, but it was good enough.
Today, however, I have 3,000 words to write, and for the first time, I'm not ahead of everybody else.  This is rather unprecedented, and I'm not sure I like it that much.  The competition is going to help some, but not getting my East Asia chapter outline until an hour ago (it's due tomorrow) does not help at all.  Nor does my vague restlessness or general sense of being unable to settle.  Can't go to the gym, either - have to go to 'desserts with the president of the school' later, which means I need to go and eat and be productive and look nice and stuff before that.  Grr.
Maybe I'll go now, and walk laps and read about China since 1945 or something.  I look like a total weirdo, but whatever.  I'm weird anyway.

Anyway, to the point of the blog: writing.

So far, the writing has been going... okay.  As I've said, I'm behind on my word count, which is surprising for me, but this is also college and I have also been on choir tour for four days and didn't have a lot of time to settle into writing.  I don't predict I'll be able to settle down into anything until late night for at least this week, but after that things should clear up.  I HOPE they'll clear up, anyway.
But plot-wise, I've changed a bit.  Melody shows more potential than I initially thought she would, and Storm is less aggressive (well, I also haven't given her anyone to fight yet, but I have given her a non-dungeon way into the city).  I've also made the prince an actual character, but he may just vanish until the end.  Except for a scene or two somewhere.
Doing NaNo in college is going to be a lot harder than doing it in high school.  I know that for certain.

NaNoWriMo (and choir tour) Approacheth

In a mere three days, National Novel Writing Month, the Adventure of the Year, will begin.  The first four days will be a huge stress-fest, which I don't look forward to; however, once we get back from Choir Tour, I will be completely prepared to throw myself into my novel (and my homework; I need to get four hours of homework done every day, remember?), and all the other things that are going to be making demands on my time (though I may just skip out on some clubs altogether).  I am kind of terrified, but I am still going to do it.  That's how the best adventures happen, right?

Though I intended to blog daily during NaNo, I now realize that I will only be able to blog on days 5-30.  Consider yourselves warned.  I will blog daily, but only after choir tour.

Also, you may be wondering why I am blogging during the time I am normally in class.  This is because of Hurricane Sandy (otherwise known as the Slightly Lame Hurricane); classes are cancelled because of forecasted Heavy Weather.  Said Heavy Weather has not hit yet; my roommate and I went to the bank and to get contact solution, and then we went to Starbucks, and we were only mildly rained on.  The rain was consistent, sure, but it was still.  What is this heavy weather that is spoken of?

anyway, I am doing NaNoWriMo.  And I write longhand, which is going to be convenient during choir tour; when I get back... we'll see.

Right.  Homework time.

Challenges

We need challenges.  All of us.  If you don't challenge yourself, you're just going to sit in the living room and watch TV.  You'll go to work and come back from work and just do the same-old same-old.  Though my dad is, in my opinion, overly fond of routines (and routines can be used to great effect), there has to also be a time for ADVENTURE!
But the time for ADVENTURE can't be scheduled in (I think my dad once said that he blocked in time to do other stuff during his day.  Never understood how this worked, but okay).  Bilbo wasn't expecting a bunch of dwarves and a wizard to come into his house and say, "Hey, we need your help.  Come with us to fight this dragon and see some elves and get some treasure and stuff!"
Though some may argue that there is always a time for an adventure, and you CAN block stuff into your day - as part of a team-building thing that was scheduled, the entire freshman class split into groups and did a ropes course, which was certainly an adventure - you can't go fight dragons if you just sit there and do nothing.  You can't opt out of the ropes course.
You need to do the ropes course.
You need to listen when someone says, "Hey, we need your help!"  Not only is it a nice thing to do, it also might lead you to dragons, elves, and treasure.  And sometimes you have to forget, or ignore, or spite the fact that when you come back, most of the Shire is going to think you're really, really weird.  But weirdos are not to be overlooked - sometimes they're wizards.  The Disturbers of the Peace probably have cooler stories than a lot of other people, and for sure have cooler stories than the people who just sat on their couch and didn't let a swarm of dwarves into their kitchen.

So, basically, for any good character to have a well and true ADVENTURE, they need to push their comfort zone and do stuff most people think is odd, unacceptable, or stupid.  Like letting a bunch of dwarves into your house.  Like climbing 30-foot poles and jumping off them, even if you have a harness on.  The whole concept of pushing one's comfort zone in an ADVENTURE works better, and prompts character development, if even THEY think what they're doing is odd, unacceptable, or stupid.
Like that one kid in The Dawn Treader.

So, both in your writing and in your life, challenge yourself.  That's the only sure-fire route to an adventure.
And if you don't want an adventure, feel free to troll blogs all day.  I'm sure someone will come down on you at some point and catapult you into an adventure.