schubade, posts by tag: writing - LiveJournal

And so begins the month of NaNoWriMo for me. I had to fret for the past few days over this Bible exam I had today (which, by the way, I did verily destroy like Sodom and Gomorrah - man I rocked that shit), and now, despite the fact that I have not one, not two, not three, but four, FOUR lengthy writing assignments due next week, at different points. But I am undeterred - I will write!

I have the need to do things perfectly if I have the option to, so I have to unfortunately not use my psychedelic magnum opus, a literary picaresque that deals with McKenna's translinguistic goo matter, because I've already written a bit of it. Yes, it was a nominal amount, but not as nominal as a sentence or a paragraph, and so technically, I can't use it. You could say that I'm squandering the opportunity to actually finish the damn thing, but NaNoWriMo is a state of mind, and honestly, I could push myself to plow forward with it at any time.

So for the following month, I'm going to wing it. I'm sitting here with Scrivener open (I just downloaded it, trying it out - I actually really like it so far). Part of me wants to do something fantastical, but part of me wants to attempt something that's mainly character-based. Not that fantasy or science fiction can't be predominantly character-based, but I mean that the whole story will revolve around mere human mortals residing on our present-day Earth. So there's no fantastical back story, merely just... people. And honestly, that's really daunting, because I keep thinking of stories like Anna Karenina, major epic works that deal solely with human relations. I'd have to think of something pretty damn riveting.

I'll probably end up adding a subtle underscore of magical realism, because that's just how I roll. :]

But anyway, I HAVE NO OUTLINE, no concept, nothing, and I'm just staring at the blinking cursor thing, really not wanting to just start writing about boring drab characters who say nothing that means anything because I don't know what's going on.

So if you any of you are pantsers (like, flying by the seat of your pants), let me know what drives you.

I was trying to decide if I should make a nano filter but um... I'm lazy, and if you don't feel like reading about nano it takes 0 effort to scroll past a post, so I think you'll be all right.

Okay, I need to get back to actual creative thought. Bai.

Hello all. It feels like I've been gone from Dreamwidth forever, but in reality it's only been like...what... almost three weeks? That's not too long, but it always feels like a really long time when I take a hiatus from online communities.

My vacation was fun. I basically spent the bulk of it at my boyfriend's house, and we lounged around, each playing our respective video games (he binged on Valkyria Chronicles and Digital Devil Saga 2, I focused my heart and soul on P3P [which by the way, ugh, so good. SO GOOD. Can I just say that updating my weaponry and armory in any RPG, particularly a Persona game, is an unparalleled pleasure?]), being mushies, and feeding our various addictions. >_> I think my body hates me.

School has begun, and that's where I am now. Tuesday's are a long day for me. My first class begins at 10:50 and my fourth and last class of the day ends at 9:20. Mondays I have just one class, and Thursday's I have only three classes, ending at 4:30. So it's not a bad schedule.

My classes are pretty fantastic so far. My Monday class is on Middle Eastern Literature, including the book "Reading Lolita in Tehran" which I have wanted to read for a long while now. Pretty much anything concerning "Lolita" seizes my attention, but I am interested in the actual overall content and focus of the book as well. It's going to be an extremely rigorous class in terms of academic and scholarly criticism and what is expected of us, and although our teacher was young and seemed very cool, he made it very clear that he was expected to make us "run crying" in terms of what was expected of us for this class. But I am definitely up for the challenge because, although I have wanted to kill myself while writing certain papers in the past, I have confidence in my abilities when it comes to writing and literary scholarly pursuits, so... bring it.

Today I had my Children's Fantasy class with Veronica Schanoes (who I made a post about earlier, she's friends with Catherynne Valente and a talented author as well), who seemed awesome, very smart, very staunch and strict when it comes to grammar and just writing well in general (which I appreciate because despite the fact that I know my journal entries are probably littered with terrible sentence structure and syntax, I am actually extremely anal and thorough when it comes to my academic or creative writing).

My poetry class seems fine too. I'm not a big poetry person, but my professor was laid back and actually made me appreciate the one poem we went over today, so that's always good.

Thennnnnn I had a Graphic Narrative course, which just speaks for itself. We're reading things like The Sandman by Neil Gaiman, Watchmen, Persoplis, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, among other popular and critically acclaimed graphic narratives, so... yeah. Awesome.

And in a bit I will have my Short Story Workshop with John Weir, who I googled and read some of his work online, and was pleased to find that I enjoyed his prose. :]

As for personal creative endeavors, I have two little writing projects happening that I'm excited about. I get frustrated extremely easily and am a huge procrastinator, but I am really trying to change that about myself because what it comes down to is basically... 15% lazyness and 85% fear of just trying and writing things that fall below my standards. But I can't be afraid to write those things and fear editing crap later. That's writing. I need to learn to deal with it.

One is currently just titled "z0mbie.doc" on my computer because I'm horrible at naming things so anything that isn't initially conceived with a title is given some bullshit one until I'm finished with it. Since I've been reading up on interstitial fiction, I've found that this is the easiest way to categorize my creative ideas, so I think that's what this is. I would say it's a mix of horror (loosely, more in theme than anything else), romance, fantasy, magic realism maybe... I don't know. I suck so bad at genres. But I hope it works out because conceptually I have high hopes for it.

The second is in very beginning stages, meaning I barely even have an idea of what the story will even be. I just have vague ideas on subject matter and construct. This was conceived with a title in mind. In fact, the title was what I thought of first, so the title will be what governs the piece. The title is "The Comedy is Over" so if anyone actually got this far and is thinking, "Hm, what? What the hell does that mean?", feel free to Google it and you'll get an idea of what what the subject and theme may be based upon.

Anyway, I will soon get to reading recent entries on my friend's list and commenting because, of course, I got a Dreamwidth so that I can not only be completely self involved and ramble about myself, but offer insight on all of your entries as well.