Cancel Christmas!

There were good things and bad things about today.
Bad things first - I'm still coughing up a storm, which meant no Choral Rehearsal for me today, which means I can't perform during the Choral Performance tomorrow. It's a tragedy, I know, but maybe I'll be in better health when I go to karaoke with the chorus on our last rehearsal this Wednesday.
Also, I made my first attempt to find a replacement sweetie for my Mum's snowballs. Snowballs and fudge used to be a Christmas baking tradition at our house, but with my development of a dangerous allergy to pecans, snowballs have become verboten and we've had to look for other baked delights to fill the sad-looking void next to the squares of chocolate fudge on the seasonally-decorated plate.
I found a recipe call Mocha Bites - which mixed instant coffee and cocoa and butter together into small, round coins that were rolled in sugar afterwards. Mum and I (mostly Mum, because of my cough) made them, but when they came out and were finished, the reaction was less than stellar. My mother said they were too bitter, my sisters said they weren't as good as I had hoped. My dad ate one, and said "They're not bad." I ate them, and while I thought they were nice, they were dry. They were the kind of dessert that I wouldn't hesitate to eat if they were being served at a stranger's house, but not the kind of cookie that I would want representing Casa AnimeJune.
Horribly disappointed, I tossed all three batches into the sink (after eating fifteen). Afterwards, however, Dad and Sisters #1 and #2 wailed, tore at their hair, and demanded why, why, why had I been so heartless and wasteful as to dump those delicious cookies into the sink? They then proceeded to salvage as many of the cookies from the garbarator as was possible (about half a dozen). Well, excuuuuse me.
Good news now - we've cancelled Christmas!
By which I mean, we've refused to hold a Big Christmas Dinner at our house. We've done it almost every year since Nana and Papa moved to the condo, and while it's a pleasant affair for those who eat the food and retire to the cheapseats with coffee and fudge afterwards, it's a pain in the butt for those of us, and I mean the people who own the house, who have to clean it up afterwards. It's tiring and frustrating and has to be planned very meticulously in advance, and very often Mum and Dad are too exhausted to enjoy Christmas dinner as much as everyone else.
Relatives have suggested other alternatives, but none of them were appropriate, and would, if they didn't make it even harder than it already was, make the dinner more uncomfortable for the guests as well. So, we've decided to do just hold a Christmas dinner for us, Mum, Dad, me, and sisters #1 and #2 (#1 has volunteered to cook the turkey - she's in Food Sciences). And it's not a complete cancellation of Christmas, and nor are we isolating ourselves from our family members. We're still going to have a big Christmas Eve dinner at Nana and Papa's condo before going to Mass, a gettogether that is, allegedly, much more popular with the aunts and uncles and cousins than our dinners.
I think it's going to be a pleasant change - the work that went into the big Christmas Feasts had arisen to the point where we dreaded the approach of Christmas - and it should never go that far.
And, I've already bought all my Christmas presents. Huzzah!

Striking While the Iron is Hot

Yesterday, my cough worsened to the point where it felt like I was being uncomfortably squeezed around my mid-section everytime I hacked something up - the effort it took for coughing strained my diaphragm and the muscles of my back.
So I stayed home, drank soda, read George R R Martin, fiddled with my homework (it's dwindled due to the approach of exams, but I'm become horribly lazy concerning it all the same), and wrote some more pages for The Boy Who Would Be Queen. By the way, that's just a working title - my mother thought it was gimmicky, and I have to agree, but it was the only think I could come up with at the moment.
However, I haven't had any trouble writing down for that story. It's amazing - sometimes I have to force myself. Reading the Willow King is stillborn - I have no passion left for it. I think the reason is that I'm writing Boy right when I'm feeling passionate about the story - and the act of writing creates momentum for the passion that keeps me writing. If I plan a story (like I did for Willow King in August), but don't write it, it goes to seed. I have to keep writing if I want to keep involved with the story - that's what helped me finish The Shining Empress, because I kept writing at it regularly, and it keep the iron hot, so to speak.
Well, live and learn, I suppose. I can always come back to Willow King and try and ressurrect it someday, but for now, I'm going to focus on Boy.
Also, I've been dilly-dallying for Desert Muse. Next week - I will send the story into the Challenging Destiny. You all heard me. I'm going to do it - if Mum can't read over it in time, well then, too bad.

Fa-la-la-la-la

On Monday, the Mixed Chorus and I performed for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. It took place in a giant theatre that glittered with lights and had acoustics so perfect that a man in the back row couldn't pass wind without the conductor on the stage hearing it.
My voice remained out of order right up the point where I was supposed to sing, and then, suddenly, I could. Not well, and probably not even on key, but I could sing, and so I did. It made me feel a whole lot better - I felt less like a fraud (like I did when we performed at the United Church before) by lipsyncing, and when I get the Christmas CD I'll know for sure that one of the two hundred voices is mine.
Mum, Dad, Nana and Papa loved the show. Mum wants to go next year, even if I'm no longer in the Chorus, although she's vowed to arrive earlier next time. She and Dad arrived fifteen minutes before the show, but since it's general admission, they were relegated to the fourth, and highest balcony. From the stage, it seems to high up it almost appears as if it's leaning forward, balanced only precariously on top of the third balcony. My mother was so terrified by the heights that she had to hold her program in front of her face to hide the gap but still look at the stage.
Still it was a wonderful show. The handbell ringer show was most entertaining. The sound of the bells is okay, but most of the fun comes from watching the male ringers, who have to ring the largest and most awkward of bells. Since the largest four are bigger than a man's head, ringing them is not a graceful affair - I mean it should be an Olympic sport. They can only ring them by lunging the arm right from the shoulder, and then they have to put it down quickly (and gently) and leap for another bell to ring it just in time. One man moved so frantically he tore his music book.
So, I had a good time, my parents had a good time, and I'm getting better. I can talk now, although I've developed a cough. But I don't really worry anymore, the Big Concert is over.

Murphy's Law

I sorry I haven't been keeping up on my posts.
I also haven't been keeping up on my writing either.
Or my homework.
And I've succumbed to my music addiction. I can listen to music an do absolutely nothing but daydream for hours on end, even when it gives me headaches, as it often does.

I'm feeling really bad - I caught my mother's cold. Worst part is, it gave me laryngitis.
I've never lost my voice. Ever. My voice is important to me. I talk, I sing, I talk some more. Laryngitis has gone through my family maybe four times in my lifetime - it's hit every one of my family members at least once, but never me. There was one time when all of them lost their voices at once - that was a happy time. I could blather on all I wanted because they couldn't tell me to shut up loud enough for me to acknowledge them.
Yesterday, I got laryngitis for the first time. Guess what today was: the freakin' Mixed Chorus Concert! I couldn't sing! I had to lipsync through the whole thing, and the way this thing is progressing, I'm going to have to lipsync through all my other concerts too.
Life's not fair. I can speak in lower registers, but higher pitches are lost to me, and I'm a Soprano II! When I laugh, it comes out as a dry cackle. So not fair. And tomorrow my parents are coming - they paid money to hear me sing in the choir - what's the point, if I can't even contribute? Have I mentioned how unfair all of this is?
However, I am making small progress with The Boy Who Would Be Queen, but Reading the Willow King has fallen by the wayside. I was so passionate about it before, but now it's spent. Hmmm....

Not. FAIR!

Subject No. 24

I have fifteen dollars in my pocket (okay, now it's ten, because I bought some chips and a bag of M&Ms today - I'm starting to get a cold and feel crappy) because I took part in a Science-Fiction psychology test.
It was quite entertaining - I was given a list of names and asked to check off the names I recognized as fantasy authors, and then I was given a pile of book covers with the author's name blotted off and asked to sort the covers into piles I thought shared the same narrative content. I was subject number 24 in the test.
Before that, I had to do the same with mystery novels/writers, as a "controlled" variable - because while I read almost entirely Fantasy fiction, I don't read very many mysteries. So now I have $10, and I'm planning on using it to rent a Patrick Dempsey movie or too. It's a little difficult, because most of his movies were made in the 80s, and were never really significant enough to merit a conversion to DVD (with the exception of his more popular movies Can't Buy Me Love and Loverboy) I have to go to specialty independent video rental places to find his movies. Mind you, I'm just going to watch his movies, and only when I have the time and don't have to work on projects or study. I am not - as my mother would have you believe - "stalking Dr. McDreamy".
Also, I've started reading George R R Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" trilogy for Green Man, and I'm already being sucked back into that world again. I love those books. I find I read them differently now. For the longest time, I relied very strongly on mental visuals when I read. First, I pictured them in my head as anime characters (this helped for Robert Jordan's books, because they became very episodic like anime), then I took to playing "movies" of the books events in my head, casting famous celebrities as the characters.
In Robin Hobb's "Tawny Man" trilogy, for instance, I pictured Hugh Jackman as Fitz, Anthony Hopkins as Chade, Gwyneth Paltrow as the Queen, Jennifer Aniston as Starling, and (I hope Robin Hobb forgives me), David Spade as the Fool. Of course, all the actors, when they're in my head, are good actors, so it works out fine for me.
Unfortunately, this allows me to read slower than I could - it took me a while to go through "A Song of Ice and Fire" the first time, even with Mel Gibson as Ned Stark, Nicole Kidman as Catelyn, a young Elijah Wood as Bran, Tom Cruise (!) as Littlefinger, and the fantastic Peter Dinklage as Tyrion. So now I'm not trying overhard to visualize it now, or play movie scenes in my head as I read it, because I actually have a deadline now to bring in the reviews, and it's in less than a month. So I'll have no time to watch Happy Together, For Better And For Worse, or Some Girls until the Christmas holidays, at least.

Another Novel

Reading The Willow King is not going as planned - the words don't seem to come out on paper the way they've been forming themselves in my head. I'm still going to work on it, but I think the reason it's dull now is that when I was passionate about the idea (during the summer), I didn't go past creating an outline because I wasn't finished The Shining Empress yet.
And now I'm passionate about another novel idea (The Boy Who Would Be Queen). So, I'm going to start to write that too. I can always do two novels at once - when I'm stuck on one, I'll start on another, or work on some short stories (I nixed the "Daughter of the Moon's Companion" idea, and replaced it with "Aunt Tansy's Alma Mater" idea) instead. So, I'll be able to keep myself busy as long as I like. I think in this case, I need to strike while the iron (or idea) is hot, and not wait it out - I can always go back and revise it later.
During the upcoming Christmas holidays, I'm going to force myself to write everyday. Write and read. Because I want to get as much done as possible.

When Irish Eyes Are Smiling...They're sexeh

Okay, this post has very little to do with writing, but I'm going to indulge myself, so bear with me.
As a young woman who loves television and movies, it is only natural that I express a certain preference, if you will, for certain actors whom I deem Sexeh and Hott. I've had brief crushes that ended very badly - like Matthew Broderick (Ferris Bueller's Day Off: *heart* Inspector Gadget: *ew*), David Spade (yes, I know...), Rob Schneider (seeing The Animal trailer: Hmmm....Seeing The Animal movie: *ew*), etc....
But while looking at my current roster of Actors I Deem Sexeh and Hott, I notice a particular similarity in all of them.
They are all Irish! Or of Irish descent.
Yes, yes, I still like Tobey Maguire and Topher Grace, but since they haven't been in anything recently (and I'm being forced to wait until 2007 to see them both in Spider-Man 3), they've been put on the backburner, so to speak.
But the ones that are currently on the Sexeh and Hott list, I don't see it as coincidence that they come (or their grandaddies came) from the Emerald Isle. I'm of Irish descent, and my family is very possessive of our Irish ancestry (my dad's a Scotman/Pole, but he's officially "adopted" Irish culture), so maybe this is manifesting itself in my taste for actors.
I'm not the kind of person who goes and looks up their biographies and pretends to know anything about their personal lives - that comes across as creepy. Take it as shallowness - I don't love them, I simply really enjoy watching their performances due to their superior acting skills and smouldering good looks. The Top Three, right now, are as follows:

1. Patrick Dempsey
Yup, good ol' Doctor McDreamy has made hospitals a pleasant place to be again. All the men on ER are ugly, or scarred, or brain-tumoured, so I have to go to Grey's Anatomy for good old-fashioned handsome doctors. Well, technically his character's a surgeon. He's the one who's only of Irish descent, but c'mon, if the Isle hadn't existed he wouldn't have been here! Plus, he shares my birthday...(^_^), but that isn't totally important, because so does William "She Bangs" Hung (-_-;;;)
2. Liam Neeson
He's good and dependable - you can always count on him to be in a good movie. He's the kind of man you notice, even in the few stinkers he's been in (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and The Haunting). Plus - unlike Dempsey, he has dozens of classic films to look back on and gawk at his handsomeness. He has a very unique facial structure that's interesting to look at, so while he's not conventionally handsome, he's very good-looking. I saw him recently in Kinsey (which was a little awkward), Batman: Begins (Irish Ninja!!!), Les Miserables (as Jean Valjean - the poor, tortured mayer with a past...), and Schindler's List. Plus, he has a sexy accent.
3. Cillian Murphy
He's relatively new to the whole Hollywood scene, but I hope he gets a great deal of work so I can look at him some more. He's very androgenous (in his upcoming film Breakfast on Pluto, where he cross-dresses, it's a little disturbing how authentic he looks in drag), but gorgeous when he's acting like, er, a man. I haven't seen 28 Days Later yet, and he had only the tiniest of cameos in Cold Mountain, but he first caught my eye as the devilish doctor Jonathan Crane in Batman: Begins, and later as an (equally devilish) assassin Jackson Rippner in Red Eye. He manages to remain Sexeh and Hott even after being stabbed in the throat with a pen and forced to cover up the wound with a woman's scarf. More movies for him, please!

I also acknowledge Celtic hotties like Colin Farrell, even if they're not to my taste. I tip my hat to Irish mothers - you make very pretty babies. Keep doing it.

Okay, the weirdness is over. (Hopefully) I'll return with some actually relevant posts later.

Mom Test

I've officially completed the peer- and self-editing process for "Desert Muse". I've tinkered with it as much as I dare, and so I will soon submit it to the "Mom" test.
All the major criticisms and editing were done with the writer's group, so the "Mom Test" is just to have one more pair of eyes search over it for typos and obviously misspelled words before sending it in to a magazine.
Reading the Willow King is, well progressing - it's a little hard. I'm focusing mainly on dialogue, when I should be using description, but I can always go back and revise it when I finished - I just have to get the ideas converted into text first.
Also, I've updated my site again! The picture for my profile is really a caricature of me, anime-style. I'm not planning on posting my real name or an accurate photo until I'm actually published - and then it will be my Author's Website.
Also, don't be afraid to comment! If I don't reply, it doesn't mean I'm angry, it means I'm rendered speechless by the glory of your wit and skill!

Light A Candle...

...For Arrested Development, peeps, one of the funniest shows on television.
Fox has cut down its episodes from 22 to 13, and the show has now been pulled from the schedule and put on haitus. While some people believe it's due to Jason Bateman's surgery, other entertainment sources believe this is simply the final nail in the coffin of a great show. Why weren't you people watching it?
This was a show so good, that if you showed in it Britain, they would be the ones making a lesser European copy of it.
Well, one can't blame Fox. Fox, the network reviled for cancelling Firefly before the first season was even over, is not at all at fault for Arrested Development. It kept the show on for three years - gave it three seasons, three chances. People practically chucked Emmys at them, but still, ratings were low. TV is still a business, and Fox was uncharacteristically generous in keeping Arrested Development alive for as long as it did. I tip my hat to you, Fox.
And if this really means the end for Arrested Development, one must turn to other sources for quality television. Like NBC's American The Office. Yes, yes, it's an American version of a British show, but it's built itself up to be quite entertaining. At first, it was tough to get used to, because Steve Carrell is a much more caustic and deliberately offensive boss than Ricky Gervais' version. However, when one watches it, Steve still manages to convey his character's desperate, pathetic loneliness. Plus, Jim and Pam (the American equivalents for Tim and Dawn) are adorable to watch.
Rainn Wilson (as sycophant Dwight) poses a much more menacing figure than the rail-thin UK version, but he's still hilarious. In yesterday's episode, you catch a glimpse of him gearing up to ask Michael Scott (boss Carrell) for a raise by listening to rock music and playing air-guitar in the stairwell, screaming "You know why I deserve this raise? Because I'm AWESOME!"
If you don't want to watch this Office just on principle (or loyalty to Gervais), then try My Name Is Earl, which is on NBC right before The Office. It's a sweet-natured morality show and a raucous white-trash comedy all rolled into one. Who knew Jason Lee had it in him? See the show - he's captivating.

My Baby! My Baby! An Editor's Attacking My Baby!

I received another critique for "Desert Muse" today from someone in my writer's group, who seemed like a pro.
While the general message was, "Your story was very good", I completely forgot about all of that, and instead looked at all the strikes and comments he did to my story! He tore it to pieces! He had this cool editing progam that made speech bubbles with his comments in them all over my manuscript. He did admit that my writing was florid and wordy. He cut out many things and said I needed better descriptions of visions and time.
It hurt. It really did. I wasn't angry at him, really, more angry at myself. He acted like he was pro (he could be an actual published writer, I suspect), and with all the strikes made to my work I felt like I had just broken in on his classy dinner party while wearing a mud-spattered paper bag. I embarassed myself in front of a professional writer with a horribly amateurish manuscript! How will I ever be a writer? Look at all the horrible mistakes I made!
I'm always reading in Writer's Digest and in writing guides how every writer, professional or not, often has moments when they feel that their editor has just molested their story, and begin to search police stations to see if there's a warrant out for a mysterious figure notorious for slashing innocent manuscripts to death. I hate to say that I didn't think it would happen to me, but I did. There's that crazed over-confidence again - I send in my story with absolutely no idea how anyone in their right mind could possibly find anything the matter with it. It's easy to accept criticism when it comes layered in swathes of glorious praise - and it's hard to accept compliments when they come edged with heartless correction.
I know I'll get over it, eventually, and it will certainly come in very handy next week, when I will polish off the final draft of "Desert Muse" and send it in to Challenging Destiny. Good criticism is like yucky cold medicine - you never feel good about taking it until later.

Did I forget to mention?

I started writing my second novel Reading the Willow King yesterday. This is the first-draft period - the seed has been planted, so I'm just going to let the story grow in whatever direction it feels like until it's done. I'll spend the 2nd and 3rd drafts pruning it down to a suitable shape, and then hopefully some nice editor will chop it down even further to make a delightful bonzai tree of a published novel.
Wish me luck!

Praises and Adulations!

I posted "Desert Muse" to my writer's group, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive!
All of them had good constructive criticism ("if you're traveling for three straight days, and the moon is full on the second day, the moonlight should still be bright for all three days", etc), but not before they told me it was "an enjoyable read, fantastic in fact", "delightful", "sure to be published" , "wonderful"...
Of course, I was inclined to disagree with some of the negative comments, but the rule for my Writer's Group (and I do think it is a wise one) is do not reply to criticism. In this way, writing is like production, and the reader is the customer, and the customer is always right! If the reader didn't understand that the tragic deaths on the desert voyage were not mandatory, and only the result of stupidity, then no amount of explaining it to them will take away their confusion at reading it for the first time.
Also, one should never use the "Well, what do they know? Their stories suck/they're not authors" excuse. It's crap. Who do you write your stories and books for? You don't write them for authors, necessarily. You write them for the average readers! So they should have just as much a say in how your work is doing than the six-figure-advance-flaunting best-selling authors.
Still, it's very vindicating to have my work praised to such an extent by total strangers. And don't take this as my excuse to puff up my chest in front of you. When I write, I have varying periods of deep self-doubt and insane self-confidence. When I read story magazines, or story anthologies, my ego shrinks to the size of peapod, barraged by thoughts that I could never write that well, how will I ever be accepted? I in no way even come close to the heights of their writing, so I should just quit now and take up gardening, instead.
However, when I actually send in my stories, my ego soars on the wings of my accomplishment of actually having the courage to send my work into a magazine that publishes stories that superior. I never expect rejection letters (until they actually appear in mailbox). I always expect a big fat "Oh my God, your story changed my life" letter, with a juicy $1000 check inside. I then expect to be asked to contribute said story to The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and then I'll win a Locus Award and a Hugo, which will lead me off into a stunning career that will make me the youngest person to be named SFWA Grand Master at the age of 25.
Crazy, no?
But praise really helps my confidence, obviously. It's one thing to have your mother praise your work, because you're always going to suspect her of bias regardless of her promises to remain objective. But to have strangers (like the editor at Challenging Destiny) read your work, without knowing anything about you, and telling you it's good, well, that's something else entirely. It allows me to feel that I could actually pursue writing as a career, and not just as a hobby when I'm slaving away at some dead-end job.

Still, can you imagine the looks I'll get if I can put "Grand Master" on my resume?

Updates...

Just finished my second-draft of "Desert Muse", and I sent it in to my online writer's group, and to my university's Writer-In-Residence for critique.
My writer's group (fairly) states that for one to post work for critique, one must also write reviews of other people's work. And so I do - I've made it a rule to critique two pieces for every one piece I send in. Seems like a good system to me.
Once the votes are in, I'll complete a final draft, and send it in to another magazine, probably Challenging Destiny first, because I received such an encouraging rejection letter from them, plus they're Canadian, and will get back to me fairly quickly. If that pans out, Realms of Fantasy will be next, because I haven't sent anything to them yet.

"I defy your writing logic!" she screamed angrily.

I've been keeping up on my reading in The Canadian Writer's Handbook, and, like a disturbing amount of other writing-advice books I have read, it strongly discourages the use of speech tags ("screamed, barked, explained") and adverbs in writing.

Adverbs and speech-tags are integral to my writing. When I first read that speech tags shouldn't be overused, I just ignored it as one particular author's opinion. When I started reading about it over and over, I got a little worried. I've made it a point in my writing never to say "he said, she said" unless I am at a complete loss for words. You see, what many adults writers may forget, or be unaware of, is that in creative-writing classes in elementary school, my teachers always encouraged me to use something other than "said" to follow dialogue. Looking back, this may have just been a tool to get me to teach myself vocabulary, but it's remained ingrained in the way I write.

Well, the writing guides say that using speech tags can be a kind of a crutch. The tone, sound, and volume of the dialogue should, they say, come through in the dialogue, and not just in the tag that comes after it. So, the implication is that using speech tags too much is just a way to make up for bad dialogue. I don't know if this applies to fantasy writers, because I've read many fantasy writers who use speech tags, and many who do not, as well.
And as for adverbs - the guides advise that if I'm using too many adverbs, I should be making the verbs stronger, instead. So, instead of "she ran quickly", I should write "she sprinted".
I don't want to change my style. I'm very possessive of it, and it's the way the words naturally come out on the paper. On the other hand, if I want to be a professional author, I shouldn't encourage bad writing habits, and if I practice writing while keeping speech tags and adverbs to a minimum, it may eventually become my natural style.

So I'm going to give it a shot. I will still use speech tags, but I think the whole point isn't to not use them, but just not to overuse them. When I'm using only speech tags, maybe that's a bad thing. Sometimes I can read speech tags smoothly, and sometimes I can't, but truthfully, I never even have the problem when reading texts without speech tags. So, if I want to make a certain point, or emphasis a certain bit of dialogue, I see no problem with using speech tags. With adverbs, well...writing fantasy requires a great deal more visual description than other genres in general, but I'll see what I can do to keep my writing from becoming too florid.
At least it'll help with my too-long word counts.

Greetings, From the Monastary!

Due to the stress of one more mid-term (nihongo no tesuto: Japanese test), my Classics Project, my Symbolic Logic Assignment, and my Final Essays in Film Studies and English, I have renewed my determination to retire to my quiet, pink, faux-vine-adorned cloister in order to meditate and pray, and in the process of so doing, to get all my work done, and some of my writing too.
I have decided to dedicate myself (when I am not blogging, or maintaining my contacts in the Spider-Man-Fan and author-blogger community), once again, to work, work, work. I missed a class for Symbolic Logic due to unforeseen problems of which it is not ladylike to divulge, and with that class I have apparently lost all my previous affinity for the ridiculously unnecessary subject. I got 95% on the freakin' Mid-Term, but the new stuff we're learning is so complex and needless that it flies right over my head.
And everytime I set myself down to writing for the essays, I can never write more than a few sentences before I start to think that I should hardly be writing this, until I get some books on the subject, and then I proceed to procure said books from the library, refuse to read them because they are long and boring, and then return them late and pay the $40 fine when I want to receive my official grade statement. Arrgh...it's especially hard for my English one - I have to find something to give my paper historical context, but there aren't very many books on the subject at the University library, and at present I am too lazy to go down to my local library and find out why I can't make requests anymore. I've tried looking up articles, but I have no head for research, and I chickened out when my professor offered me help. I claimed I didn't have time, but really, I just wanted to go home so that I could start procrastinating!
I think I'm going to have to eat crow, and ask her for help before the November Break.

Author Contact

I went to a distant relative's wedding shower yesterday.
It was interesting - when they were opening the gifts, the hostess started a game where the person whose gift had just been opened had to make a wish for the next person whose gift was about to be unwrapped - without knowing who the next person was to be.
When my family's turn came, I wished for the next person to experience "wild passion" - a suggestion that elicited much laughter when the wizened grandmother of the bride stood up next to watch her gift being opened. The rest of the party didn't pass so smoothly, I was snubbed by both Sister #1 and my grandmother, and returned home in a bad mood.

I've tried posting on authors' blogs now - Jennifer Macaire and Catherine Collins have both replied, and Robin Hobb (Robin - freakin' - HOBB!) replied to my posts on her message board. I posted on Elizabeth Bear's LiveJournal today, but I was a little intimidated - all the other commentators appeared to be published authors as well, who knew Ms Bear a great deal longer than I have (I have not, as of yet, had the chance to actually read any of her books, but I have heard of one [Hammered, which was mentioned in Locus]), but I am automatically admiring of anyone who has managed to garner fame in the fantasy/science fiction genre. Is this wrong? I just hope she isn't insulted that a teenage girl who still lives in a pink bedroom with teddy bears in her parents' house dared to post on her Journal.

Also, on the Spider-Man movie website, they've officially announced Thomas Hayden Church is cast as Sandman for Spider-Man 3. Expectedly, the messageboards proceeded to erupt into chaos, and I and a few others have felt it necessary to try and restrain the swearing-matches and fan-boy chest-thumping that has resulted.

I'm still trying to write the second draft for "Desert Muse". It's fairly easy for me to rewrite the first halves of my stories, but for the latter halves (which are invariably better-written), I'm often lazy and resort to copy-and-pasting large passages into the second draft instead of rewriting those parts. Should I rewrite first-draft passages even if I think they're already good enough?

Uh, yeah, I'm gonna need more time...

...To finish all of these books! Culled from Entertainment Weekly, my parents' suggestions, and Locus magazine, these are books I'm planning on reading. While they might not necessarily be in that order, I hope to read all of them, at some point. Wish me luck, and if you've read some of these already, post in my blog and tell me what you think!

The Queen of Springtime, Robert Silverberg (currently reading)
On Writing, Stephen King
Year’s Best Fantasy 5, Various Authors
Shinjuu, Laura Joh Rowland
The Eyre Affair (and other books), Jasper Ford
East Side Story, Louis Auchincloss
Crache, Mark Budz
Baker Towers, Jennifer Hargh
The Chrysanthemum Palace, Bruce Wagner
I’m Losing You
I’ll Let You Go
Still Holding, Bruce Wagner
The Pig and I: Why It’s So Easy to Love an Animal, and So Hard To Live With a Man, Rachel Toor
Christmas Stars, Edited by David G. Hartwell
The Stupidest Angel, Christopher Moore
The Bachelorette Party, Karen McCullah
Please Don’t Come Back From The Moon, Dean Bakopeulos
Out of My Head, Didier Van Cawelaert
Mr. Timothy, Louis Baynard
Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre
The Family Tree, Carole Cadwalladr
Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson
Home Land, Sam Lipsyte
Small Mediums at Large, Terry Iacuzzo
Be More Chill, Ned Vizzini
Ireland, Frank Delaney
Phantom Nights, John Farris
The Book of Joe, Jonathan Tropper
Little Black Book of Stories, A.S. Byatt
Blood Done Sign My Name, Timothy B. Tyson
Harbour, Lorraine Adams
Case Histories, Kate Atkinson
Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
Prep, Curtis Sittenfield
The White Rose, Jean Hanff Korelitz
Death of an Ordinary Man, Glen Duncan
Wrong About Japan, Peter Carey
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer
Dear Zoe, Philip Beard
The Last Kingdom, Bernard Cornwell
The Reading Group, Elizabeth Noble
Upstate, Kalisha Buckhanon
The Big Show, Steve Pond
The Truth About Celia, Kevin Brockmeier
Snobs, Julian Fellowes
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Notes from the Underbelly, Risa Green
The Forgotten Man, Robert Crais
The Big Picture, Edward Jay Epstein
Oblivion, Peter Abrahams
Midnight at the Dragon Café, Judy Fong Bates
Gods in Alabama, Joshilyn Jackson
Cagebird
Warchild
Burndive, all by Karin Lowachee
Spin, Robert Charles Wilson
In the Glory of it All, Sean Wilsley
Innocence, Kathleen Tessaro
Dead Beat, Jim Butcher
Child of a Rainless Year, Jane Lindskold
Vanishing Acts, Jodi Picoult
The Year of Our War
No Present Like Time, both by Steph Swainston
Marrow
The Well of Stars, Robert Reed
The Last Guardian of Everness, John C. Wright
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clark
Freedom’s Gate, Naomi Kritzer
A Crack in the Line, Michael Lawrence
Fitzpatrick’s War, Theodore Judson
Olympic Games, Leslie What
Through Violet Eyes, Stephen Woodworth
Black Juice, Margo Lanagan
The Mysteries, Lisa Tuttle
The Wizard Knight, Gene Wolfe
A Princess of Roumania, Paul Park
700 Sundays, Billy Crystal
Making It Up, Penelope Lively
It’s Superman! Tom De Haven
Campus Sexpot, Daniel Carkeet
Wicked
Son of a Witch, Gregory Maguire
Gary Benchley, Rock Star, Paul Ford
School Days, Robert B. Parker
The Physics of Superheroes, James Kakalios
On Beauty, Zadie Smith
Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants, Jill Soloway
A Wild Ride Up the Cupboards, Anne Bauer
The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
Tooth and Claw, TC Boyle
Wish. Melina Gerosa Bellows
Running With Scissors, Augusten Buroughs
American Gods, Neil Gaiman
26A, Diana Evans
The Easy Rawlins Detective Series, Walter Mosley
Iron Council, China Mieville
Looking for Jake, China Mieville
How To Be Lost, Amanda Eyre Ward
God Jr., Dennis Cooper
Charlemagne’s Tablecloth, Nichola Fletcher
The English Teacher, Lily King
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
That's 102 books, in case you're counting.

Feedback, while Laid-Back

I love autumn and winter.
Those are my favourite seasons - they're cold and snowy, without being soggy like spring. The air always smells like woodsmoke (in summer, the air smells like barbequed beef - which isn't always a bad thing, except when you walk home from the busstop with steak on your mind and you end up with boring old tuna casserole on your plate).
The nights are getting longer, the clouds are descending, and the shadows are gathering everywhere - to me this isn't a bad thing. It makes me feel warm and safe and cozy, as if I'm a tired moth cupped within the shelter of someone's hands. To sit in bed with a lamp on and a novel in front of me, it is bliss. I am learning to love reading again, although I'm still having trouble sitting down to write anything. The moment I start, it becomes work, so I start procrastinating. Ah well, "Desert Muse" is almost finished, and soon I'll start pestering Mother to read it and then set it in front of my online Writer's Group to see what they think.
I uploaded the first chapter of The Shining Empress onto the Writer's Group forum, and they basically concurred with what my mother thought of it.
I'm very talented at establishing imagery with my words, but too often I use three words where one would suffice. Also, my main character's a total bitchface. She gets better - but not that much. I always found Kisaino entertaining, and it was great fun to write about how silly she is, but that doesn't necessarily mean that other people will have fun reading that.
One different between what my mother thought, and what the people at the Fantasy Writer's Group thought probably had to do with the fact that the folks in my group were more used to reading fantasy than my mother.
My mother reads fantasy occasionally - Charles De Lint, the Anita Blake books, Jasper Fforde's stuff - but I don't think she reads it the same way I and the group members do. She found the names of my characters bewildering; if they both started with the same letter, she confused them - for several paragraphs she thought my warrior prince was a girl. The group members never quibbled about the names, although I suppose we're used to it. After all, I'm reading Robert Silverberg's The Queen of Springtime for Green Man Review, and half the time I think he picks his characters' names by closing his eyes and jabbing blindly at his keyboard.
Anyhoos, I'm starting to learn that I'm going to have to trim my prose down, and make more likable characters.

Next up: I'm going to be publishing my gigantic Books to be Read list - if you've read any of these books before, send me a comment about whether you liked it!

My Exclusion from Nerd-Topia

I realize that it's sinfully early to do so, but I've been constructing and revising my Christmas Wish list.
It's amazing how much writing your own wish list tells you about yourself. For me, this year I thought that the things I was asking for were more mature. I asked for books about novel writing, and memoirs of authors, as well as Movie/Book/CD gift certificates.
I also didn't ask for anime. Or videogames.
I think I've actually grown out of videogames. I just don't have the time to invest in RPGs anymore - they're like novels - if you stop halfway and come back to them months later, you have no idea what's going on. I have so many more things I need to spend my time on - my stories, my blog, my reading of authors' blogs, my reading books for review and school - that videogames just seem irrelevant.
And anime - I still like watching it, but I've never had the money to buy them regularly. It's not that I don't like anime anymore, it's just that I've learned I can live a perfectly happy life without it. Both this, and my new apathy towards videogames leaves me feeling a little depressed.
I think it's because liking videogames, and liking anime, gave me contacts. Not actual, literal contacts, but I always knew that there were other people out there who looked these games and shows, cool people, famous people, funny people (like the guys over at Machall.com, Pvponline.com, and Penny-Arcade.com) - I felt part of the whole Nerd Universe, a silent network of sunlight-shunning people. It made me feel like I was making some sort of contribution to pop culture, because Nerd is "in" these days, and all the TV shows and entertainment magazines and films are making a big deal about games and anime now. It made me feel popular - like I would if I found out that Rachel McAdams used the same lipstick I did. It's stupid, and shallow, but it made me feel less like a freak.
And now I feel a little isolated. I've eaten from the Forbidden Tree of Maturity, so now the Nerd God has expelled me from the Nerd Eden, to eke out a harsh life in the barren Desert of Adult Interests. Now that I don't rely on videogames for entertainment anymore - writers are solitary people by nature, and when was the last time a Fantasy Author (excluding Stephen King, Rowling, etc..), or the act of reading or writing fantasy novels, was joked about on the O.C., or was the motive for a grisly murder on C.S.I.? I'm sure I'll get over it, I'm sure many people (parents included) will think this makes me an "adult now" - but sometimes I wish I could scoot back over to the kiddie table.

At least I still like playing Monopoly - Topher Grace, Tobey Maguire, AND Jay Leno love that game, although Leno doesn't use a jackpot for Free Parking. Pssh, loser.

Whee!

200 hits!
It pays to put one's blog in an (aspiring) Author's Blog page! (www.authorsblogs.com).
And I've updated my profile!

Gory Guilty Pleasures

I have no Classics class today, because our professor has run off to some conference or another, in Portugal. So here I am, reading authors' blogs, working on my English Essay, and surfing the web.
There's apparently a trailer out now, at Apple.com for Final Destination 3. Oooh!
It will probably not go down into the annals of film history, but it's a guilty pleasure that I, and my sisters #1 and #2 partake of, on occasion.
We saw the first Final Destination movie, which involved a teen who gets an explicit and graphic vision of his plane exploding in mid-air, and waking up in a panic, gets himself and five other people kicked off the flight. Guess what? The plane explodes ten minutes after taking off, and the plot is that Death had a particular plan, and that by ruining the plan for himself and five other people, the teen and his friends are being stalked by Death, who means to set things right. You never see him, but through intricate, gears-and-bolts and seeming coincidences, the teens die, horribly. Sad to say, it's fun to watch.
What's interesting about the Final Destination films is that you can't yell at the characters for being stupid. They don't die by going down into the basement by themselves, or by wandering off into an abandoned warehouses. They meet their ridiculously violent deaths by seeming accident. In the first film, one boy slips on a conveniently placed puddle (Death's work) and ends up hanging himself on a clothsline in his bathtub. Another girl walks out into the street and gets hit by a bus. Another boy (played by Sean William Scott) get beheaded (or more accurately, half-beheaded, he leaves his chin behind) by a piece of metal that was sent flying by a speeding train. A teacher gets the most violent death - she ends up jabbed in the throat (by an exploding computer) stabbed (by falling knives), and burned (poorly-maintained oven). You've have to see it to believe it. And at the very end, a year later, one of the three remaining people ends up crushed by a piece of French architecture in Paris. The boy with the vision dies off-screen, by a falling brick (how pedestrian!), or so we're told by the final survivor in the second movie.
The second Final Destination involves a young woman who has a vision of a horrible highway accident involving a logging truck. In a panic, she stops her car in the middle of a merge and prevents the people behind her from driving on and meeting their predestined fates. In this one, we meet the last survivor of the last movie, who's holed herself up in a loony bin to keep Death from coming after her. This movie has a bunch of twisty things about it, as well as gory deaths. We learn in the film that all the people who were supposed to die in the accident, had had their lives saved before by the deaths of the people in the first film (example: a substitute teacher was moved from one school to another, and ended up avoiding a school shooting - and guess who he was called to replace? That's right - the jabbed/stabbed/burned teacher from the 1st movie).
This movie was a little sillier because it showed that that Death doesn't just screw up once in a while, but apparently all the freakin' time. He even makes several false-starts and miscalculations in this film! A teen (before he's finally crushed beneath a falling pane of glass), is supposed to die in the dentist's chair, when he's breathing sleepy-gas through his nose and a broken piece of a mobile falls into this throat, in one of the most gruesome dentist-movie-scenes ever. He's saved by a dentist! Damn you, Death! Get it together!
In this film, the last survivor from the 1st film and one of the other characters dies when an oxygen tank in a hospital is set alight, a lottery winner is impaled through the eye by a falling fire-escape ladder, a crack addict is cut into three pieces by a flying barbed-wire fence, a woman is beheaded by an elevator, a boy is flame-broiled by an exploding barbeque, and woman is skewered through the head when a airbag is deployed, which pushes her head back onto the spike protruding from her headrest, the result of a car accident.
It's deliciously evil to watch, but how they set up the deaths is fairly entertaining and suspenceful. The third movie, judging from the trailer, seems to base itself on a roller coaster disaster that yet another pyschic teen escapes, along with a group of doomed youngsters. The deaths in this one (again, judging from the trailer) seem to include a malfunctioning tanning bed, falling swords, wooden stakes, a rear-end collision, and fireworks.
I don't think I'll be lining up to see it in theatres, but I might want to take a look at it when it comes out on DVD.

B-musing

Got both my papers today.
Turns out that the English class I got locked out of on Wednesday was an accident - I tried the door and the prof didn't hear me scrambling at the doorknob, and the students closest to the door didn't bother to open it. Grrr....A pox on them and their children!

My film paper got a B+. The teacher said I needed to focus more, and that can be a bit of a problem, at least concerning my final 10-page essay. He doesn't require sources, just intense analysing, but my initial topic is a little, er, general. The topic is how I think Hollywood was doing its part for the civil rights movement by employing racial and social minorities in the roles of comic relief. I kinda feel I have to go all over the place for this one, but I'll try to reign it in.

My English paper got a B, a 3.1 (high 70s). This professor said I basically needed to explain my points more, because I brought them across with quotations without adding something after - well, that'll help, and will make me feel less guilty for padding my final essay with extra sentences that aren't necessary.

Still, I don't like getting Bs. They're low, for me. They are high 70s - low 80s. And I'm supposed to be a writer. English is supposed to be my thing. Science is the thing for Sister #1, and she's getting 97s! Why am I only getting middling grades? I always chose a topic and defend it eloquently. Does this mean I'm a bad writer? What if my grades now determine what kind of writing careers I can get in the future? How can I get better when essay-writing is entirely subjective?

Basically, I'm not doing wonders for my GPA. Maybe I should just quit English and take up a major in one of those silly courses that require concrete formulas I can make myself remember, where if you're right, you're right, and if you're wrong, you're wrong.

Or maybe I should stop writing in my blog now, and get working on those essays.

My Hasty Leap from the Wagon

I've come to realize that I've been a bit hasty in labelling NaNoWriMo as a writing challenge for amateurs. Upon my recent exploration of author's blogs, a great number of them mention NaNo, and how far they've managed to get in a day.

So, I'm chewing on my toenail polish when it comes to what NaNoWriMo is. It's a fun challenge for all kinds of writers, published and unpublished. It's probably just as hard for an accomplished writer to make a whole novel in 30 days as it is for the junior high student just getting into the game. To be fair, this was the first year I've heard of it as any big thing, but I should have been a little more considerate.

However, I stand by my decision of dropping out this year. My papers need work, and while I still have plenty of time, I find myself pushing my writing skills to the utmost just to get the page limit that I require. I've fairly good at BSing - at writing five words into a phrase that really only needs one, but I can only go so far without completely exhasperating my professors.

I received a letter (mass e-mailed) from Chris Baty of NaNoWriMo on November 1st, and while it was meant to be encouraging, it only helped to point out the reasons why I shouldn't be doing it this year. It was all about how I should feel entitled this mouth to let the kids drive themselves to school, to not cook, to let someone else walk the dog, do the chores, etc -- that's selfishness, and not one that I feel I can indulge in, living as I am with my parents and two sisters. My writing, which is important to me, is not as important to them, and the work around the house has to get done every month, November being no exception.

The look of a Writer

Two posts in one day! Aren't you lucky, dear readers!

I finally received my September 2005 issue of Locus magazine, the one for Fantasy and Science Fiction books, or as I like to call it, the One Magazine I Subscribe To That Allows Ugly People On the Cover. Most writer's aren't ugly, and I know this, but the cover photos are spectacularly unremarkable, if not unflattering. Most of the famous, established authors featured are plump middle-aged women in bobs with cats-eye glasses, or else old men in long, Old-Testament style beards who are balding a little on top. The only exception to this rule seems to be Neil Gaiman, who always manages to look like an angry rock star with his lips twisted into an arrogantly cool pout and his hair in his eyes. Anyone who had any part in writing 1602 deserves to look like cool. Well done!

I hope to be on the cover of Locus sometime. It's a magazine that doesn't seem to get the same amount of subscribers as, say, Entertainment Weekly, but it's always exciting to read about who's sold their 87th book for a six-figure sum, or who has delivered their long awaited trilogy to their agent, or who has had to split their original manuscript into two books because as a whole, it is so long that it is physically impossible make a single book that size (hint, hint, George R. R. Martin). It's edited by a man named Charles Brown, and his Editorial is often diverting, although it seems as if he can't go a day without eating supper at a famous author's house or restaurant and drinking a great deal of wine. His editorials go something like this, "Read What'sherface's book, which was very good, then I went to dinner with her and ate this and this, which were delicious, and then I met Someone Someone, and we shared a delicious lunch where I ate too much, and the next day I went to a conference where I met Whatshisname, and we couldn't stop talking all the way to the lobster restaurant..." You get the idea. What a life! Reading, writing, and eating lobster with celebrity writers. Awesome.

While reading about writing can be fun, I'd like to read more about the writers themselves. I'm already a devoted Snarkling (of Miss Snark, Literary Agent, at misssnark.blogspot.com) even though I've only been reading her blog for three weeks, but I'd also like to find the blogs of professional writers as well. I know Neil Gaiman, Rock Star/Comic Guru/Famous Fantasy Author has one, and does the man who edits for Tor Publishing, but I'd also like to see if Robin Hobb (aka Megan Lindholm) has a blog, or if Tad Williams has a blog.

I'm pretty sure Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens have sorta missed the boat on this phenomenon, but if you happen to know any interesting fantasy author blogs, be sure to mention it in my comments.

Halloweenies

Every neighbourhood has its own Halloween ebb and flow. People with kids move in, then those kids grow up, then eventually move out and more people with children move in. It's a slow, inevitable cycle.

My neighbourhood is barely older than I am. When I went trick or treating, kids assembled at doors in groups three persons deep. We roved the street in packs of fifteen to twenty. The Halloweens were always snowy in those days, so I could never be the dainty fairy princess, because no costume could look dainty when worn over a fluffy parka. I was a cat for many years, an angel of death (mistaken several times for a dead nun, due to the white balaclava worn underneath my hood), a good witch, and for my final trick-or-treat, Cleopatra.

The children of the neighbourhood have grown up. We go to parties now, or are supposed to go to parties, anyway. The doorbell rang maybe eleven times yesterday night, at most. That can be a good thing, because it means we can eat the rest of the candy with little guilt, but it certainly made last night quiet. I like the idea of one day where the streets are roaming with giggling children. They were nearly empty yesterday.

Also, I realize that if I want to get homework done, the office of the Gateway is not always the useful place to do it. The Gateway is manned by a host of philosophical, intelligent young men and women of our generation, who cannot help but engage in meaningful conversation whenever they get the chance.

Take yesterday, for example - an argument erupted whether Darth Vader could be beaten by Batman/Unicron/Ash from "Armies of Darkness"/Magneto/20 Unicrons/Professor X, etc.
"The comic-book Batman could take him," one participant insisted, "But movie Batman would get his ass kicked."
"If Darth Vader had the Death Star, and a host of Tie-Fighters, could he then take on Unicron?" another asked.
"Quite possibly."
"What about twenty Unicrons?"
"I don't think anybody could defeat twenty Unicrons."
"Not even thirty Death Stars?"
"Thirty Death Stars and Batman, if he turned to the Dark Side?"
Needless to say, I'm intimidated. These men are far superior to the members of the Anime Club!

Where are my Virtual Smelling-Salts?

My computer, upon being turned on today, proceeded to experience a seizure, and fall down in a proverbial swoon. After a system scan that took half and hour but produced no clue as to my laptop's ill-health, I rebooted, and my laptop emerged from her fainting spell perfectly willing to be as cooperative as she had been before. I suspect it had something to do with the fact that she has become used to having her rooms regularly swept and clean by the maid Window Washer trial I acquired, and my failure to buy the program before the trail period ran out must have left her rather distressed by the amount of clutter remaining in her harddrives. Oh well.

I've been reading like mad, and, for once, exercising regularly - by combining the two (reading while peddling away on the exercise bike), it has become easier to do both. I've already finished one of the books I am supposed to review for Green Man, and the last novel I have to read for Victorian Lit (that would be Mary Barton), and am now working my way through the textbook for my Hollywood Cinema class, a book about theatre, novels, and some cinema, and how they are related to the cultural left in the 30s and 40s. Some of it's interesting, but only a very little of it really has to do with the class. At least I'm reading it - many of my classmates have admitted that they don't even bother with it.

Also, I'm keeping my desire to write alive by reading my copy of The Canadian Writer's Handbook (13th edition). It's a wonderful tome full of hundreds of articles by Canadian writers on how to write, how to research, how to find inspiration...I've desided that if I spend a few minutes reading one article a day, I can get through it without having to wait while I read through all of the others books on my list first.

Now that I've withdrawn from NaNoWriMo, I can start writing Reading the Willow King anytime I please, and I think it will be soon. First though, I'm going to try and finish "Desert Muse", and pester my mother into reading the second draft of The Shining Empress.

I'm Not Giving In, I'm Stretching Out

I took down my "NaNoWriMo" icon today. I've decided not to make a try for it this year.
The party I went to on Friday was also a big bust. I got on the wrong bus, arrived 15 minutes late and ended up sitting with people I was not comfortable with. The whole point was to just talk and hang out at a Boston Pizza, but there were adults there, too, and by adults I mean old people who brought their hyperactive screaming children. Not fun. I ordered the Stromboli sandwich with fries, chatted cordially with a young man in a Robin Hood Men in Tights outfit, and had a brief, friendly debate with a teen who identified herself as a pagan who possessed the animal spirit of a "Fairy-Cat-Dragon". She was very nice to be sure, and as a Catholic I am completely ignorant of pagan beliefs, but weren't animal spirits supposed to be, er, actual animals?

However, I didn't want to stay too long, and ended up having my mother drive me home (I had neglected to consider that the cab companies might be busy on the Friday night proceeding Halloween). I was disappointed in the whole affair - I had gone to this party instead of to the Mixed Chorus' Halloween Dance, an option that my mother evidently preferred. I wanted to get in touch with other writers, to form a network of contacts, but nearly everyone at that party seemed to be amateurs who wrote in there spare time and had no desire to be published at all.
My mother said, "Why do you feel to need to participate in NaNoWriMo? I mean, isn't this just to prove that you can write a novel, and work up your writing skills? You've already written a novel" - The Shining Empress, which I feel I have to continually nag my mother to read - "and you will be published eventually." I considered her words very carefully, and found that I agreed with her. NaNoWriMo seems to be for the hobbyists, but I'm heading for the Big Leagues, I'm in for the long haul. Besides, I have three papers due this month, not to mention finals to study for, books to review, and Christmas presents to buy. In truth, those are supposed to come first.

I might want to give the whole "50 000 words in 30 days" thing another shot when I'm out of University, but for now, I think I should focus on my getting my writing published and out there. My writing has already helped me be considered for a CBC Sketch-Comedy show that is continually being delayed due to a lack of funding and the CBC worker's strike, so maybe I should just stick to that - writing for the Gateway, the Green Man Review, and sending out my stories.

All Grown Up (?)

I'm a second-year University Student, and in two and half months I will have reached my second decade of life, but it still amazes me how young I feel and act in my own mind.

Last night, I came home late, and found my parents had gone out to dinner without me. Feeling miffed, I took some money and walked through the cold to the nearest fast-food joint to get my own supper. I would cook it myself, except, that I can't really cook anything very appetising. I can boil pyrogies, but they cool pretty quickly and once they do they're gross. When the moon is in the seventh house, and the three outer planets are aligned, I can make pancakes that are edible. There was soup in the house, and bread, and cheese - but I was cold and lazy. I didn't want to come home from a long day to eat something cold or lukewarm. So I went to McDee's.
So I left the house in a huff, feeling very irritable and out of sorts, and angry - and the most childish and cliched of thoughts turned over and over in my mind like pancakes of petulance on a griddle of self-righteousness indignation. Maybe I'll be hit by a car, I thought, Maybe I'll be kidnapped or murdered or violated or converted to Scientology and then they'll be sorry, sorry they didn't wait for me, and take me with them to supper so that they could have spared themselves this horrible tragedy.

Mother will cry, "Oh! It's all my fault! If only we had waited to take our daughter with us, then she wouldn't have had the need to leave the house and encounter the Anime Otaku Strangler in a dark alley! Woe! Woe!"

And Father will scream, "How selfish and thoughtless we are! Now that Tom Cruise has her, we'll never see her again! We're horrible parents!" And then they will rend their clothing, and beat their breasts, and tear at their hair, all while I smirk down on them from Heaven, or wherever Scientologists go after they die.

I'm too old for that, aren't I? No one in their right mind would really want to go out and get themselves assaulted in order to spite their parents. But it disturbs me that I still harbour such thoughts.

Worse, Sister #1 decided to host a Halloween party for four of her friends, and Mother and Father bought her boxes of Halloween candy and pop for the event.

Once I found out about this, I was miserable, and immediately I think : Why doesn't anybody tell me these things? Why doesn't anybody tell me Mum and Dad will buy treats so that we can hold parties? It's not fair, I want to have a party and have my parents fund it!

I then proceed to feel sorry for myself that my friends live out of town, or that I don't have their phone numbers, and that they don't know each other so I can't pretend that I always have a group of chatting acquaintances surrounding me wherever I go.

I can't believe that at my age, I feel so depressed whenever my sisters get something, because I feel cheated because I didn't get something too. I was never planning to have any kind of party - I am going to go to a party today for National Novel Writing Month, but I have to pay for my own food.

Why is it that whenever my sisters receive a special and unique and totally-out-of-the-blue gift, I can't help but be angry and jealous and self-pitying because I hadn't thought to tag along on that particular shopping trip, or thought to ask if my friends could come over, or just asked outright that I wanted something, please, please? I immediately forget everything special that was ever done for me, or else they seem to become horribly insignificant by comparison. Mum always used to tell me how hard it was to purchase Christmas gifts when we were young, because she'd always had to make sure that she and Dad spent an equal amount on all of us, and that we all had the same number of presents to open, and that no one got a gift that was just so much more special than the others. I can understand that greed when I was young, but what about now?

Even now, I can't remember anything special my parents have done for me (recently). I'm sure they have done some things, but seeing those huge cases of pop intended for Sister #1 and her friends inspires in me the belief that my parents just love Sister #1 more, that they are more willing to do things for her because she doesn't like silly cartoons and comic books and televisions shows like me, that she's the responsible one and so gets special priviledges, and that they think I'm an adult who is now responsible for getting her own presents and gifts by herself, with her own money, and shouldn't rely on her parents so much for silly things like love.

I'm sure none of that's true - I mean, when our Aunt had a new baby, did Mum say, "No fair! I could have had another baby, and then I would have been the centre of attention!" Or when my Uncle got remarried, did Dad say, "Awww....I didn't know I could get a new wife. Damn!" No. So when am I going to grow out of it?

Reading and Writing - Words and Music

As you can see, dear readers, I have been making an effort to post more frequently, due to the abnormally large amount of people who have been visiting my site! The counter has been up for less than ten days, and already more than a hundred people have stopped for a look.

Of course, with more quantity comes the threat of a lack of quality. When I post every now and then, it is usually because something extraordinary has happened, and I naturally put all of my writing skills to good use in order to transcribe the experience accurately. When I'm updating with the extraordinary (albeit to a lesser extent) somethings of every-day life, naturally I should spruce up the language a bit to keep you all interested, and to give my writing skills a good work out for the literary equivalent of a triathalon that is National Novel Writing Month. With three papers due in November, I have my doubts as to whether or not I will be able to reach the 50 000 words, but I at least want to try. I can be fairly wordy at times, so reaching the limit shouldn't be as difficult as it might be for some, but whether my ramblings will make any sense is anyone's guess.

I did rather terribly on my Classics Midterm, but the professor was very merciful in tolerating my bad spelling (I wrote Pharaoh Akhenaton's capital as Akheton, and the prof accepted it, even though the real spelling is Akhetaton). Still, I only got a 75%, and I don't want my GPA to drop any lower than where it already stands at 3.4, because I can't bear the thought of Sister #1 gloating how she has higher marks, and how a 3.4 is the equivalent of a C+ (I think it's closer to B+, but feel free to comment if you know for sure), which is nothing near as remarkable as her wonderful grades.

And my Symbolic Logic mid-term is today. It is one of those dangerous subjects where one feels that one is so very good at it, and understands each concept so clearly, that studying for it is a horribly boring task and one cannot help but do it very poorly. Of course, when the results of these subjects come back, one finds that one's work is not nearly as perfect as one fully expected it to be, but is instead riddled with dozens of tiny mistakes that one could have avoided if one had studied to the fullest extent of her abilities.

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Moving onward, my rehearsals with the Mixed Chorus are going very well. With few exceptions, I have always managed to work myself up into a foul mood concerning some small inconvenience that occurs at the beginning, but I can never succeed at holding onto that black mood for long, because I am always overwhelmed by the power of the music and the general good-nature of the other members. There are two kinds of rehearsals - the ones during the week are "Full Rehearsals" - where the entire Chorus sings together. These are my favourite kinds of rehearsals, the music vibrates so strongly through the soles of my feet (with the help of the very sexy-sounding Bases and Tenors) all the way up to the top of my head (with the pixie-ish voices of the Soprano Is - I am Soprano II, and as such, am rarely called upon to extend my voice up into the quivering heights of the First Soprano Range).

I always feel very powerful when I am performing a solo, but that is nothing compared to the strength that one feels when one is singing with two hundred people behind you. It glorifies my vocal strengths and conveniently hides my mistakes. I feel the same importance that I do as a soloist, but I am no longer subjected to the pressure of having the success of the performance rest entirely on my shoulders, to know that my voice is supported by women who can reach higher notes than I can, and go for longer without breathing, and can remember the pronunciation of the German/Latin/Old English words.

The second kind of rehearsals is the "Sectional", and thankfully -- since our Christmas Concert is drawing nearer -- there are going to be far less of those. Sectionals have their uses, but they come nowhere near the glory of the Full Rehearsal. Sectional is where each section (Soprano I, Soprano II, Base, Tenor, etc...) learns their own notes individually. For someone who can't sightread music, this is incredibly helpful to me, because in the heavenly cacophony of the Full Rehearsal, it is sometimes hard to pick out what is supposed to be your note out of the host of others.

My two problems are that it sounds a lot quieter and makes my fumblings more apparent to sing in a smaller group, and that our section leader and instructor makes a frustrating amount of mistakes when teaching us the notes. We always get it right in the end, but I have lately taken to keeping a score of how many times the instructor says "Sorry" throughout the course of the Rehearsal. I realize it's petty, but since everyone has already learned their parts for all of the songs, I will have less occasion to do so.

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Lastly, I am completely engrossed in Mary Barton. It truly is a marvelous work of fiction - it drew me right into the story so that I could not stop reading. All the heroes are so flawed and beautiful, and Elizabeth Gaskell is very adept at linking the scenes with the proper amount of suspence. Mary Barton, if you don't wish to be spoiled, does not go the Emily Peggotty route, I am happy to say. Her mistakes are eventually rectified, not without cost, to be sure, but the ending (I haven't quite finished) doesn't look like it's going to be as completely depressing as I suspected it would be. As I mentioned before, the book is quite realistic, although it does occasionally rely on the quaint idea that strong emotions (sorrow, a broken heart) can lead to illness, convulsions, and death. During the courtroom scene where Jem (Mary's true love) is declared "Not Guilty", Mary is so anxious and stressed that she undergoes a type of epileptic seizure, and takes a long while to recover. I think it's fairly silly, but the rest of the book seems to be quite well-researched, so I'll leave it alone for now. I highly recommend you all try reading Mary Barton, if you haven't already.

At least I got the 'the' part right...

I made a complete ass out of myself, dear readers, during my film lab yesterday. We have to watch two films, the first of which was On the Waterfront. During the break between the two films, I phoned my mother to tell her I was going to be late (due to the films' lengths).

"Oh? And what's the second film you'll be watching?" Mum asks me.

"Into the Night," I reply, from memory. I hear the professor snort, but I can't see for what reason. I start to understand, once the movie starts - the title says Out of the Past. Eeep.
Well, it's not my fault, you see. I lent my syllabus to an acquaintance from The Gateway, because he said he'd missed the first few labs and classes. I lent it to him, he did not give it back, he does not attend any of the classes or labs afterwards anyway, and I no longer see him in The Gateway offices. This required me to ask the professor for another copy, which was embarassing, to say the least.

On the Waterfront was a fairly decent movie, I enjoyed it, and Marlon was a babe back then. I couldn't understand why, after he testifies against the Mob-run longshoreman's union, all the other longshoreman were cruel towards him, or why that annoying kid killed all of Marlon's pet pidgeons. I understood it better after I read a part in my textbook that relates how Elia Kazan portrayed Marlon's testimony in a manner that echoed his own "naming of names" during the Red Scare. I don't quite see the connection myself - getting people into trouble for supporting harmless politics seems to be quite different then exposing a union leader who resorts to murder, poor wages, and blackmail to shut people up.

Out of the Past reminded me, in the very beginning, of the plot of A History of Violence, and I thought it would turn out that way. Turns out not - it was dead boring, with endless unnecessary twists, a sardonic gumshoe (Robert Mitchum, who bears a faint resemblance to Clive Owen) and a dame (Judy Greer) who leads us all on a repetitive she's evil - she's being used - she's evil - she's being used chase. They end up dying together (Judy's character shots Robert's while they're driving towards a police barricade, and she's finished off by a cop), and the innocent towngirl that the gumshoe was hooked up with walks off with another dude. Not quite my cup of tea, I'm afraid.

--
Mary Barton is turning out to be quite the quick read - even when I have to go slower over the accented dialogue. It seems strangely more contemporary than the others Victorian novels I've read - Elizabeth Gaskell doesn't cushion the narrative with piles and piles of words (like Dickens, who I think I take after the most, stylistically speaking), and describes quite appalling, and appallingly realistic conditions of the poor. Mary Barton, to me, seems to be following the Emily Peggotty route of David Copperfield - she's adored by a man of her own low class, but she's aiming high for the son of a factory owner in hopes of becoming a lady. I certainly hope that Henry Carson isn't entirely like Steerforth, and won't try to marry the girl off to his butler when he's through with her.

--
In writing news, I was working over the plot of my NaNoWriMo novel (only in my head, you understand), and I came to realize that my ending was a tad idealistic. However, this was not a bad thing - because it gave me a wonderful idea for a sequel, while still supplying the first book with a climax and conclusive ending.

Portrait of an Artist?

I've tried reading like mad on Sunday, and managed to finish David Copperfield just in time for today, when we will be discussing it in class. I've decided (for now) to renounce listening to music, because it takes up hours of my time and is entirely unproductive, seeing as all I do when I listen to music and rock back and forth and daydream about my fame as an actor/singer/screenwriter/director/fantasy novelist/Hollywood social butterfly. I have also decided to limit my television to two hours a day (more on weekends), reading during the commericals, and staying up later to read into the night, and getting up early to read as I exercise on the bike.

David Copperfield was a good novel, and I've just finished reading it for the second time. I enjoy David's character very much, even if he does seem to be quite submissive - more an observer than an instigator. But the women in his life (with three exceptions - Betsey Trotwood, Peggoty and Agnes) are all twits. His mother is a push-over, with no self-confidence, who worries herself into an early grave instead of standing up for her son. Clara Copperfield's answer to verbal pressure is to burst into tears - which solves every type of problem, now doesn't it?
I hated the character of Mrs Strong, when I thought she was cheating on the Doctor with her idiot cousin Jack Maldon, and even in the end, when it is revealed that she never strayed, even though all circumstances contrived to make her look like an unfaithful gold-digger, I couldn't help but hold on to a bit of my dislike of her. Why didn't she come forward sooner?

Dora, while certainly good-natured, had the mental age of a six-year-old. A very cheerful, sweet six-year-old, but a child nonetheless, which disturbed me to some extent as to why, exactly, David was attracted to her in the first place. Especially since she had the nickname of his child-wife. She lives on in every girly, bubble-headed yuppie with a tiny yappy dog forever in tow - in short, she is the Paris Hilton of the Victorian Era.

I believe I felt the harshest feelings towards Emily. I know we are expected to feel more angry towards Steersforth than Emily (and he did lure her and used her, there is no doubt of that), but Emily made the conscious decision to go with him, in order to rise above her social station. I can respect that, even though it broke Ham's heart, and I would have had a great deal more fondness for her if she had stuck to her guns. But no! She insists on sending letters full of misery and self-reproach. "Oh, I hate travelling all around the world with a wealthy gentleman, gaining admiration and fame!" --This is a crude paraphrasing, "I'm a horrible, horrible, evil person, feel free to hate and forget about me!" If she feels so badly about what she is doing, why does she continue to do it? Get over yourself, woman!

What confuses me is that my English prof refers to David Copperfield as a kunstlerroman - that is, a portrait of an artist. David becomes a writer at the end, but what I disagree with is the suddenness that he turns to his craft. There is very little indication that he shows any sort of inclination towards writing - he tries things as a proctor, than a note-taker for Parliament, then suddenly "took a liking to authorship", by "writing a little something". Where did that come from? True, there was a period in his childhood where he read a great deal and loved all the adventure stories he had on his bookshelf, and in Salem house he told stories to the other boys, but once he runs away to find his aunt Trotwood, and starts living a better life, he forgets completely about this - until it resurfaces suddenly after his wedding to Dora.

It's much more obvious in books like, say, Anne of Green Gables, where everyone knows that Anne simply must become a writer, because there is no restraining her imagination and flair for the dramatic. I simply wish David would have remained more consistent, would have tried writing a little earlier while he was with the Doctor, and it would have made more sense.

I also learned today in Japanese class, that the Japanese are simply crazy for Anne of Green Gables (who is known in Japan as, translated, "Anne of the red hair"), and when a Japanese citizen says he's going to Canada, it is immediately assumed that he is going to visit Prince Edward Island. It's astonishing, really - nearly everyone in Japan has at one point, or will at one point, read Anne of Green Gables, or watch the anime adaptation (!) or read the manga adaptation (!). I can't imagine what part of the book would be so appealing to an entire nation (I enjoyed it myself, it's one of my favourite books, and my mother has always been convinced that I am Anne's twin in personality, imagination and verboseness) to such an amazing extent.

I guess admiring Canada for one literary work is similar to admiring Japan for one medium (anime). Silly me...

Drowning In Words...

I'm a very greedy person, about certain things, to the point where I find myself in awkward situations.

My family has always loved reading--my parents have a huge room in the house stocked with thousands of their books. I inherited this love from them - I love getting books.
Well, now it's getting to the point where I have too much to read. I have all those Victorian novels to read for English, I have three novels to review for Green Man Review, and another book on the way (a George R R Martin novel in a series I love, but I have to do it as an omnibus with the other previous novels - novels that are 600 pages long, or longer.)

Not to mention I have a gigantic list of books I want to read, culled from Locus and Entertainment Weekly reviews - none of them I've even come close to being able to read. I also have the Jasper FForde books, and the Neil Gaiman books, and all of my parents books which they are always insisting I read (Shogun, the Lord Peter Whimsys, Starship Troopers, etc.). And that's not even mentioning all of the classics (Dickens, Bronte, Austen, Falkner, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Revelations, Timothy, Acts of the Apostles...) that I believe I have to read if I want to have any respect at all in writers'-circles.

And yet, today, when my parents went to the bookstore, I tagged along and got them to buy me another one. Shinjuu, by Laura Joh Rowland. What is the matter with me? Well, I guess I know what's the matter. I simply can't bear to be left out of a "treat" situation, so I take what's offered without thinking about how good it is for me. I think I might even have to give up TV to finish reading all that I have to read. I might have to save up to buy another bookcase, or throw out some junk so that I can clear off another shelf to put them on. I might have to stay up later reading (and do it in a sitting position, I always fall asleep after reading one paragraph if I attempt it lying down) and wake up earlier to read (even though it annoys Sister #1, who sees my light under the door and thinks I'm staying in bed on purpose so that I don't have to go down first and empty the dishwasher - which isn't what I'm doing. I swear.) . I just don't know what to do - I never thought that I'd be in a situation when one of my favourite pasttimes has become a stressful burden to me.

By the way - my hit counter turns out to have been a good thing after all - I thought it would go up once, maybe twice a day if one of my relatives visited it - but close to ten people see it a day, even more sometimes. This also means that I must start writing in it with regularity, because I don't want to disappoint you dear readers, who, as it turns out, are most certainly NOT a figment of my imagination!

I've Added New Stuff!

Namely, a hit counter - so I can see how many dear readers I actually have. Whether this will prove, or shatter my beliefs that my blog is at least a tiny, humble, perfectly modest hit, is yet to be seen.
Currently, I'm pretty stressed. I've been lazy, and the result it that now I'm scrambling to study and read and take notes, and apply for scholarships and make the deadlines...
I can only fervently hope this is all over by November, so that I can participate in NaNoWriMo unimpeded. I've joined the forums now, so you may all go to www.nanowrimo.org and have a chat with me, if you like. The website is very detailed, and I've already signed up for parties and stuff with my other regional writers.

New Novel!

As you may have noticed, I've signed up for NaNoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month, which takes place every November.
Basically, the point of the contest is to write a 50 000 word novel from November 1st to 30th. Meanwhile, people from all over the world get together and have writing parties and participate in writing forums to prepare for the big event.
I already have a novel planned (Reading the Willow King), that I haven't started writing yet, that I will save until November to write like crazy. Wish me luck!

Check out the official website, if you dare. It sounds like a great idea, and they're raising money to build libraries in Laos.

Blogging from the Mountain Tops

‘Tis me, dear readers, about to experience a most enjoyable Thanksgiving Weekend. After my grandparents, who had previously hosted the large holiday dinners like Thanksgiving at their house, moved from said house to a luxurious condo, we’ve always had the big feasts at our house. They are worth the trouble and the effort, in the end, but really, it does take such a great deal of trouble and effort to organize the whole affair, to cook and baste and stew enough for fourteen people, to bring up the wooden leaf to extend the table, to put on three layers of tablecloths and polish the silver and assign the seats and scrub the house clean.

Not this Thanksgiving, though, thank the Lord! This year, my grandparents have whisked me and my immediate family off to an exclusive mountain resort, where they have secured an entire deluxe cabin for our lodging. We shall be having turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce, but now it will not be up to us to make them, and it won’t be up to us to clean up afterwards. Joy of joys!

Everything is excellent. Mum and Dad, Nana and Papa, and my Sisters 1 and 2 all share rooms together, and I get my own (with a king-size bed!). Each room has its own adjoining bathroom, two nighttables and lamps, a phone, a TV, a closet, and a chest of drawers. Not only that, but because we have an entire cabin to ourselves, we also have a fully furnished kitchen, game room, TV room, and living room for our personal amusements.

We spent four hours in the car driving up here, which meant we spent three and half hours listening to loud music by ourselves, and half an hour rubber-necking to see all the mountains. We were warned upon checking in that it was elk mating season, and to not interfere between a bull elk and its harem of attractive elk concubines, because horny male elk tended to smash everything that moves near their pretty ladies. I figured this was to warn people who were going to take nature walks, and was most unnerved to find not one, but three bull elk and about thirteen cow elk clustered around our cabin. They were eventually chased off by a caretaker with what looked like a gigantic bright-yellow mop, but I will have to remember to be careful when I move from my cabin to the reception desk and the heated pool.
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Of course, while all of this was all well and good, it was getting a bit late, and so we headed down to one of the restaurants around the resort for supper, on our grandmother's reservations. We were ushered into a dimly-lit establishment with musak (the worse kind, the kind with jazz sax and clarinet!), where we had to wait another hour to get our food, which was burnt. After alerting the staff to my fatal allergies, I was not allowed to eat bread, and the waitress mixed up our drink orders after spending ten minutes getting them. The only consolation was my dessert, which was specially made for me (the manager was actually quite helpful and accomodating), which was a large plate of fondue with pieces of cake and cookie and strawberry and melon to dip into it.

--
When we finally went to bed, we found the elk all sleeping around our cabin.

--
On Saturday, the elk were gone, and we all went our separate ways for the activities. My sisters went swimming, and I followed them after a time, eventually purchasing goggles so that I didn't have to doggie-paddle towards the the shore of the pool with my eyes tightly shut every time my head went underwater. We had a long lunch (long due to the service, because the resort was very busy for the Thanksgiving festivities), my sister #1, Mum, and Nana went on a kitchen tour, my father on a nature walk (which turned out to be intended for children), and I went back to the cabin to work on my short stories.

--
The dinner this time was a buffet, and since my mother had the foresight to call attention to my allergies during the kitchen tour, when we arrived at the dining hall, a very nice sous-chef named Todd came out to lead me through the whole buffet. Soup was in, bread was out. Meat was in, cheese was out. I managed very handsomely (although I limited most of my choices to meat), but could only manage some ice cream for dessert, because all of the deserts had been exposed to nuts and the kitchen was far too busy to do anything else, something I completely understand.
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We have a sing-along on Saturday night (during which every family member is annoyed with at one point or another - the "young'un's" like my sisters and I because we don't know all the old Irish hymns my grandparents sing, and the older ones because they don't approve of the word "ass" in the songs that the "young'uns" choose), and then charades--which was quite hysterical during some parts of it, because we knew each other so well, one would only have to charade one word for a family to call out the eight-word movie title they were thinking off.
--

Sunday morning, no elk. We went to church in town, where I was reduced to pent-up hysterics by the end of it due to the creepy priest, who spoke horribly slowly with a terrible accent and a half-disgrunted, half-murderous look on his face. We finally managed to leave, and participate in the brunch, where Todd again leads me through the buffet.

I love brunch buffets--because it usually means waffles, the large, thick belgian kind, with lots of whipped cream and berries and hot syrup to go with them. I was horrified during the buffet tour because Todd told me to AVOID the waffles because they bought the batter from a company that might have exposed the batter to nuts. Without pastries or bread or cheese allowed, I began to miserably plan my meal around slices of greasy bacon, pan-fried potatoes, and bacon-potato salad, when Todd showed up again to correct his previous statement - as long I wasn't allergic to soybean oil, the waffles were fine. To my delight, they didn't just have hot syrup, they had hot MAPLE syrup, something so expensive that I rarely have it but tastes heavenly on waffles.

--
We go shopping afterwards, but no one gets anything after we entered a shop that actually charged about $25 more then the prices they advertised, which is illegal. We left in a huff, and alerted the front desk to their activities.

Mum and Dad and I go for a short walk to see the other Special Cabins. We saw the one that the Queen usually stays at, that actually burned down in 2001 and had to be rebuilt identical to what it had been for $3 million.

We also saw the special cabin that was reputed to be haunted (some homekeepers still refused to clean it), after a staff member in the 50s broke her neck falling down the steep stairwells.
I finished the first draft of my short story, "The Desert Muse". I'd started it a few months ago, but stopped working on it after I felt too disgusted with it to continue. Needless to say, I finished it, and while it still needs work, at least it's finished.

Dinner was a plated meal, and even with my allergies I didn't miss much - I still got to have turkey and candied yams and pumpkin tart.
After supper Mom and the girls and I watched Desperate Housewives before going to bed.

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Monday (today)
The elk returned, and came so close to the cabin that we watched, in still-faced wonder, as the bull elk of the herd nibbled the hedges beneath our first-floor window. We spent most of the morning watching them, when we were not packing and getting ready to leave and discovering that I'd lost my goggles. I think it's safe to say that after such a wonderfully luxurious stay, I've been forever spoiled for other, lesser hotels/resorts.

Confessions....

I'm currently experiencing one of those periods where I look upon my future career as a writer with dread.

It's a hard life, being a writer, and to be honest, I've become accustomed to an upper-middle-class life of standard luxury. I don't know what other marketable skills I have other than writing, and so what will I do for a living? I mean, I belong to an online writer's group for fantasy authors, and ALL of them are hoping to be published, but some of them write like crap, only they don't know it. Here comes the tingle of self-doubt: what if I am a horrible writer, only I don't know it? My parents think my writing is great, but they are my parents. They insist they are being subjective, but as their daughter, my instinct is to disbelieve anything positive they might say about my writing.

I mean, I might want to go into teaching (that's the only other career idea I have right now - I don't have the memory capacity or stamina to be a doctor or a lawyer, and I don't have the people skills necessary to go into advertising, and the city where I live is not enough of a cultural hub to lend copywriters any great opportunities), but will I have time for writing, then?
This whole train of thought leaves me feeling depressed and self-conscious. I feel like everything's wrong with me except for my writing, and the only reason that my writing's excluded is because I don't know for sure. I'm lazy, I can't cook, I can't clean (I'm a lazy perfectionist, which means it takes about 3 hours of lacklustre work to complete a task that should only take an hour of dedicated work), I can't keep things organized and neat to save my life, I can't shop - everything I buy shrinks, so I continually believe that my clothes look horrible on me and that everyone else knows it - I think I'm ugly, or at best, "unconventionally beautiful", I can't pay attention, I can't remember things, I'm overweight with an addictive personality (I thank God I never started smoking, or else I'd never be able to quit that - I'm having a hard time quitting a bizarre habit of rocking back and forth while I listen to music, a habit I am certain is giving me brain damage), nobody likes me, I can't make friends, or if I do, I'm inconsiderate and can never bring myself to keep in touch with them for more than a few weeks before I forget about them, I want to own cats but am now certain I could never stand to own one because I'd just be compelled to wash my hands every time I'd pet her, I'm narrow-minded and habitual, I don't like travelling or trying new things, even though those things are integral to being a good writer, I limit my writing because I don't know enough about how the world works to write well about it, and I think that I'll never know enough because I watch too much TV and keep my head in the clouds or down in the sand and never read the political bits in the newspaper, and don't even know where to start with fieldwork and research, I'm selfish, I like to talk, I spend money irresponsibly and never keep up-to-date on my finances, I'm petty, I'm immature, I'm pretty sure I'm a racist, I can't tolerate mistakes in others when I make so many myself, I think I'm losing my hearing, I label myself a devout Catholic even though I daydream about cartoons in Church half the time, I like to sing but am never willing to train myself professionally and feel envious of anyone who sings better than I do, I'm vain (during the periods where I do not think I'm ugly), I'm proud, I like to flaunt all my tiny accomplishments as if I invented How to Make Chocolate Pudding All By Myself and How To Get an Encouraging Rejection Letter, I'm vengeful towards my sisters, I manipulate my mother to get angry at my father whenever he picks on me, I'm a hypochondriac, I don't want to grow up and get my own doctor and my own dentist and my own optomitrist, I can't drive, I daydream all the time, I can't keep my room clean, I can never remember which ridiculously fruity socks my sisters wear when I do the laundry so I always give them the wrong ones, I can always find an excuse for not working (like writing in my blog), I worry all the time about being poor, I rarely give to charity, I'm always wishing that my high school years had been like the ones on TV, I feel nostalgic for when I was in elementary school and didn't have to worry about all of this, I'm greedy, I think I have an eating disorder (too much food in, instead of too much food out), I love to mooch off of others while contributing as little as I can, when given essay topics I always go for the one I think is easiest, I can't help but think that every writing idea I get has been done and re-done hundreds of times, I'm convinced I'm not up-to-speed with every other student on the university campus who talks about "the postmodernist populism of post-Imperial Britian" or some such thing involving post-whachamacallits and somethingisms, I've never kissed a guy, I'm afraid I'll die a virgin, I'm tempted to become a nun just so that I don't have to think anymore, I lie and exaggerate the facts and say I saw someone do a crazy thing for laughs when it was really me and I was too embarassed to say that I did it, I talk during movies, I'm always afraid my mother is going to die, and I can't help but think that the best years of my life are over.

And I'm only 19.