Shrinking

No posts recently, since I left my laptop in my hometown, and have been forced to connect to the outside world by my iPod or my boyfriend's Mac.

I've taken to writing the dates in the margins when I begin writing for the day, and it's been showing an unfortunate trend. The last three days or so I've been writing less and less. I think today I only wrote like five words.

This is troubling, to say the least. I am like 800 words behind my quota. Can't decide if I should make myself make up the words, or just shrug and move on.

To Mum and Dad

Please, please, please, do not, when I become famous and go on Ellen or Oprah, criticize my grammar or use of profanity/adjectives from the audience.

I love you.

Soph

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so I haven't written anything today. I've barely even done my homework, which is generally a sign of a Busy Girl because I am rabid about homework. Writing was replaced by Xboxing, meeting Boyfriend's grandparents and trying to talk to his mum, who I'm fairly certain thinks I'm the devil trying to corrupt her godly little boy (who by the way is two years older than me) and having not one, but TWO soccer practices. Which was exhausting and slightly painful.

(Don't be fooled into thinking I'm athletic. I'm not. In soccer you can get away with violence, and kick things. It's a great game.)

Ernest Hemingway says that any game you couldn't die during wasn't a sport. Considered how I felt after TWO practices, I'd say he would have called it a sport.

Though I haven't written anything, I have been doing thinking, which helps. Since I'm changing the plot pretty dramatically--let's face it I'm writing a whole new book, for some fucking reason--I've been thinking about who my characters are now and how they're going to be different. I'll have to get to know some of them all over again.

Not all of them, though. I'm only drastically changing one character--Jill--and that's not even guaranteed, and swapping one character (Owen) for another (Danny). Everyone else is pretty much staying the same except for Evy, who is going to change no matter what. She's my heroine, and heroines in my stories always end up reflecting me in some way. Usually I'm trying to express something through a story, so my heroines are always gritty short girls with issues. Like me!

So, my concern is that I'll write a bunch of stuff, then have to get rid of it, because it was all just me trying to get to know my new kids. Which might suck. Sigh.

I'm going to play more Xbox. I'm determined to actually DO something when I'm bored, instead of do things that require no energy and give me fast-action satisfaction, which I'm thinking it turning out to be pretty unhealthy for me.

So, better than I thought

So, my earlier word count was way short. I actually had 942 done, and today I got to 1332, so I did more than my goal of 300 words. Hooray!

I've also decided to go with first person in that funky past tense thing. Things are going alright for now.

Musings in Miller Hall

I'm honestly not sure how well posting from my iPod is going to go, aince I feel like I make a Illion errors when I type on this thing, but my tBlet is busted so here we are. Nearly ALL my communication decives are failing me rifht now-- phone's dead, nook won't turn on, and my laptop Mal is just gasping himself to an early grave. Poor thong. My lack of auccessful devices is freaking me out. My ability to stalk people ia failing. Though maybe it's a good thing! Fewer distractions. So i've done about a page today. It's already wiggin me out. I don't think it's really doing what I need, but I'm stick of fidgeting around, so I'm just carrying on anyway and if I really hate it I'll change it later. The exact opening isn't that crucial in this case. Also still tryig to dogure out what DAMN IT TYPO tense to use. Right mow I'm foong woth first person present, which I've only ever used for short stories. We'll see howbit goes. I also keep getting distracted by how weirdly smooth and shiny the paper in my notebook ais, but I think that's just me whinging. Getting held up necause of tje paper is ridiculous. Man, this lack of phone is driving me crazy. People could be having fun RIGHT NOW an I have no way dof knowing.

300

Alright, so I managed  to type some stuff into my computer. My current plan is to write during the day, then type up the progress at night and edit as I go. The problem with this is, I keep thinking, "Ah, I should have more of ____ in here!" which is more like revising than editing.

I'm sort of approaching every page like a short story. In a short story, you (re: I) generally know the scope and tone of the thing, so if on page 5 I know something's off, I'm comfortable fixing it. With Anti-Angel I'm on like, page one, and even though I want to make that page really clean and pretty I have a feeling it'll just bog me down and turn me crazy.

Current goal for today is 300 words. I think that's like a page, double spaced. This should be pretty easy to do, since all we're doing in class today is watching a movie and then doing the Jamaica Kincaid workshop.

Also trying to remind myself to just relax and have fun.

Are you getting the sense yet that I'm just a ball of anxiety?

Ambiance

How does one actually create a setting for writing? I used to do all my writing in the classroom. Since I hated high school and was bored for most of it, instead of listening to teachers I wrote in my notebook. I still do that in college, only to a lesser extent because (a) the stuff I'm learning in college is generally more interesting and (b) it's harder and actually requires attention.

I don't actually write a lot at home. And almost never at night. I'm in my room, where it's totally private.

I'm going to try turning on the colored light ball, and seeing what happens. Probably nothing but who knows? Won't find out until I try.

Energy Abounds

It is after seven o'clock on a Thursday evening, I have no homework and I am ridiculously bored. (Also wondering if I should have put the Oxford comma in that sentence.) I am sitting at my desk, trying to think of things to do:

1. I could play Resonance of Fate, or Final Fantasy XIII, or even Kingdom Hearts on one of my various game consoles. But I'm either (a) stuck or (b) sure to get bored within an hour.

2. I could read. There's a large pile of books surrounding my bed, including some good stuff like Black Heart by Holly Black and The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, which I'm supposed to read anyway for book club. But I spend all my time reading ANYWAY, being an English major and all and turning about a book every three days.

3. Write. Already did some of that, and it was uninspiring. Also again, I spend most of my day writing anyways, since I'm specifically a Creative Writing major.

4. Go visit a friend, of which I'm sure I could wrangle up/lasso/hire. But I am feeling hermitish. I gnerally don't like hanging out with my friends, which is confusing because I like my friends. I just like being alone more.

So basically all I'm doing is sitting at my desk, drawing random doodles with a Sharpie on the calendar I have spread out to hide the ugly leather top (it's an ancient desk), and realizing that although I very much want to do SOMETHING, I have no real desire to INVEST in anything. I'm really just expending my energy into useless little things, like drawing with Sharpies, which give me some tiny little sense of instant gratification (and possibly also an inhalant high).

But part of the reason I don't think I've really written anything in about two years--and I mean written anything that could go into a novel, not just short stories or rants about Facebook or people at work which will never see the light of day--is that somehow I've made this shift to focusing on what I cna accomplish NOW, instead of actually putting an hour or two into something that will take a long time. I have all this restless energy and no motivation to get rid of it.

So I started a blog, like people have assumed I've had for years, as a bizarre way to motivate myself. Journaling is boring, but I figure since it'll look all cool and whatnot on the Internet, I might have fun posting. It'll just be a way for me to talk about what's bothering me and hopefully pep talk myself into actually doing something with my time, and not just wasting it drawing on things.

I really, really don't want to spend my life drawing on things, just because I'm too lazy to do anything else.