This is honestly the longest time I've gone without posting in awhile...

But I have a very good reason- watch and see!



More soon!

Poll!

I added poll- tell me what you think! :D

When the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won, ‘ere will be the set of sun.

[This post is long overdue, I realize. But I've been so busy lately!]

I hate to say that this has been an unnaturally good experience, because every show or production should (in my opinion) aspire to run as smoothly as this production of Macbeth has. But the facts are that we started out doing a production of Macbeth, which should doom you there and then. But instead of prickling thumbs and danger around every corner, the biggest drama was in fact not on stage, and had to do with some idiotic production students who happened to decide that they wouldn’t show up for tech rehearsal. Said students were quickly replaced, and the production proceeded smoothly. Nobody was injured that I was aware of, there was one case of swine flu, which the actor recovered from in two days- and this was still in the rehearsal stage! There were no real fights, and the entire cast got along well. I had an amazing experience, and hope to work with the same group again sometime. :)

Curling up with mom, a cup of peppermint espresso, and the movie White Christmas. :)

Timeless Thursday

I know that I did music last week, but this week is worth it just as much! Simon and Garfunkel are hands down fabulous. Not terribly unlike The Beatles, they have paved the way for music makers around the world. Here is one of my favorites of their songs, (mentioned in my novel, actually) called The Sound of Silence. Ignore the Portuguese.

Writing.

NaNoWriMo is an amazing goal for any writer who wishes to one day write a novel. That novel may be something that they write and then put away in some folder to stumble upon in a few years, or it may be something that they will continue to write, edit, and eventually publish. I hope that my novel will be more of the latter. That being said, I have learned so much from NaNoWriMo about the REAL novel writing process, and this is very limited knowledge, from only one month of real hard core writing... Take it from me, the process is not glamorous or sweepingly romantic- there are moments of course, but those occur on the inspiration roller coaster high, most of the time when you’re sitting in a cozy cafe, coffee in hand and Frank Sinatra softly playing in the background. That’s about the time that you blink, and see that your hair is frizzy, you smell like something slightly burnt, and notice that you have a fantastic 154 words, with only 99,846 words left. You are small, and trying to achieve a goal that many others have tried and failed ahead of you. On the good days you sometimes hear the ghosts of authors past cheering you on, “What’s that Tolkien? Lewis? Austen?” and then other times you just hear the washing machine and the car alarm going off in your neighbor’s driveway.
I learned that writing is largely a process, and less of an inspiration explosion going off inside your head, trickling out through your fingertips. It often times means sitting down somewhere relatively comfortable (or uncomfortable, whichever you might prefer) and writing about your character’s irritation with Zombies (oh, you had better believe I did) or maybe perhaps coming up with a model of your character’s bedroom, which will allow you to accurately describe every detail as it’s right in front of you, but not accomplish any real purpose at all. (Oh yes, I had a productive month!)
It’s hard, and sometimes really, really sucky, and you will absolutely NOT want to write any more.
The process is also REALLY REALLY LONG. Yes, I wrote the bulk of a novel in 30 days, but I still have tens of thousands of words to write before I even complete the first draft.
In movie terms, (who doesn’t love movies?) the first draft is the equivalent of some dude (or dudette) thinking, “hmm. I like this idea that just popped into my mind!” and then scribbling that idea on a napkin, or whatever is handy. The information written on the napkin is changed, edited, unused, tossed away, before it becomes a usable building block. That is the first draft. From that napkin scribble, plot, characters, and a story need to develop; this is REALLY where you no longer recognize the brief note that you wrote down some time before. There is then the arduous process of pre-production, producing the napkin scribble for the screen, finding directors and producers, and people to play your napkin scribble characters, shooting the film, and editing, and... it’s a lot.
The biggest question I seem to be getting lately is “when can I read it?” (it being my novel) My response is to laugh, look down at my napkin, and laugh some more.

Formspring!

Hey everyone- I now have a formspring! What is a formspring? It's a question box which allows you to ask me anything.... Literally. :) Check it out at http://www.formspring.me/theknittingnerd

Timeless Thursday! ABBA edition!

Here is your Timeless Thursday post, even though it's appearing on Friday... :)

ABBA!

I'm slightly preoccupied, so Timeless Thursday will be posted on Friday.

The Sound of Silence

SO. I finished my novel. ... ... ... It's kind of funny to me how I can write 50,000 words about something relatively specific, and yet here I am with an entire blog at my disposal, the world simply at my fingertips, and I can't think of much to say. I have a lot of school obligations, so please forgive my lack of posting- I should be back to full strength by the holidays. Happy December!

At the TGIO party! :)

The second batch of info!

Here are some other facts that you might enjoy!

There are six guys mentioned in my novel by name, four of them have a name that starts with the letter 'J'. I only recently realized this, and it was not intentional.

The official "final" scene that I wrote yesterday (the scene that put me over my 50,000 word goal) involved Chinese food, tubes of cookie dough, and the movies Pretty in Pink, starring Molly Ringwald, Breakfast at Tiffany's, with Audrey Hepburn, Sleepless in Seattle, with Meg Ryan, Vertigo, with Grace Kelley, and While You Were Sleeping, with Sandra Bullock- the scene is only about 200 words long, and is towards the beginning of the book. I actually wrote the ending of the novel, or what I think is the end of the novel, early on in the process, within the first or second week of NaNoWriMo.

My novel is comprised of two dream sequences which make absolutely no sense, a road trip to the beach, a bus ride to Washington, DC, countless emails, it mentions football more than I'm quite comfortable with, and a portion of the book is set about five miles from my house.

One of my dogs is also thrown into the novel exactly as she is, simply renamed.

Roughly 166,700 people signed up for NaNoWriMo this year, and a whopping 32,000 people won, roughly 19% of all participants, a NaNoWriMo all time high!

*collapses*

So, I did it. You cannot imagine the relief and sheer joy that I felt when I looked at my word count and saw my total of 50,011 words, which came out to be 268,544 characters. I also have some other statistics that my readers, who or whomever you/they may be might enjoy.
March was written in three states. I began in Virginia, wrote some in South Carolina, but the bulk in North Carolina where I also technically finished the novel for NaNoWriMo.
There are at least seven more scenes in my head that need to be written down that I ran out of time for tonight. There are some not TOO gaping plot holes, but I definitely have more to do!
I wrote March on my iPod Touch, my Cell Phone, and my laptop. Very little of it was written on paper, I think I type faster than I write, but as a whole, writing it out took too much time to type up later, thus the cell phone and iPod.
I have gained more than 30 twitter followers from NaNoWriMo participation, and finally for tonight,
I have thoughts of a sequel. :)