Ugh

Well, putting off this research paper was, of course, a bad idea, but I'm so used to doing that by now it's just normal. I work better at the last minute I find, I focus better--though in sporadic intervals. However, I'm stuck at 318 words for a paper that needs to be at least 750, and I'm stuck and can't find resources or articles online that are good. The paper is about the Apollo mission and more specifically why we got to the moon first. It's to be combined with three others at some point, but yeah. It's due tomorrow--story of my life. Needless to say I'm going to be catching up on today's word count tomorrow because as soon as I crank out 500 more words for this essay I'm crashing only to wake up early tomorrow to print it out. -sigh- I suppose I should stop procrastinating again and go look for more articles in my never-ending quest for knowledge....
[why do I need to do this again? I'm a theatre major? meh, ah well...]

Small Update

I'm off to a rolling start! At least 1700 more words than my last NaNo attempt which admittedly was in the middle of November or slightly after is started and only got like 300 words... I'm currently up and running at 2107 words.
Here's a small random tidbit that helped me get to those words, an excerpt in other words. :)
Though not a particularly relevant/good/long/etc.. one....

"Well that's why I don't teach history. I couldn't stand the thought of the subject. No, I'm an English teacher. One of the best, I like to think. My students certainly enjoy my class. I'm regarded as the cool teacher, everyone requests me which is a pity because I only like to have about 15 people tops in my classes. I teach any number of English courses you can imagine, even one that only lasted two months and met every other night that focused on National Novel Writing Month. We spent half a month sort-of laying out a guide for the student's novels and then spent the whole month focusing on pounding out word counts, finally we spent the last two weeks looking over each others' and having a laugh and talking about revising stories. That's beside the point, however--You should know I simply teach English at the school and am probably the most popular teacher at the college...."

Hope there's at least someone out there enjoying this. 8D
Goodnight for now and hopefully I'll remember to post another update on things tomorrow...

First Day

Okay, so first day of NaNo and I've got not a single clue about my story. My idea has shifted from wanting a nerdy, librarian type to narrate a story, to a time traveling group, to a Robin Hood-esque story perhaps set in modern times, to my current love which has no plot or anything just me wanting to write from a villain's perspective. Remeniscient of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog in the sense that the villain is kind-of more of the good guy than the hero. I think I've decided to set it in some school setting. I do know the sort of idea, based on this quote that I love to death;
"Villains are so much more pro-active than heroes. Heroes, by their nature, are purely reactionary forces. You never get a hero just doing things by himself, he always reacts to an event pout in motion. The villain is in all ways and agent of change. A catalyst."

That covers the whole idea behind what will hopefully turn into my 50k+ words at the end of the month. I'm hoping to get at least 2,000 words written tonight before I retire and hopefully some will get typed out during my lunch break after my statistics exam. I'm completely excited because I can't wait to 'meet' this new character of mine that will be the focus, and perhaps narrator of the story. He feels like he's going to be very interesting. 8D

Oh and here's another calendar, well same as one of the others, but it has the 75k/100k word count instead of 50 and 100. Again, if anyone wants to request a calendar to be made I'd be more than happy to take it on. It'll be a distraction from homework and perhaps some of the troubles that may arise from my story.

NaNoWriMo

So Yay! NaNo is almost here, just a couple more weeks and the madness begins. I've decided I'll try and post daily/weekly updates here or something of the sort. Not that anyone looks at this thing, but maybe someone will take interest in how my novel's going. Let's hope. =]

This would be my second attempt at Nano, though last year was a complete and utter fail, like no where close. Too much going on. This year I'm into this, I'm super determined to get it done. I've actually got someone who knows what this thing is and will be writing as well, and hopefully I can get the creative writing department in on it too, I'm going to send the head an email either tonight or tomorrow about it just letting her know it's happening. Which is good 'cause we also have a script-writing class which is perfect for Screnzy in April.

But yeah, I'm so into this, this year. I've made two calendars (out of boredom sure) with wordcount goals on them. One looks like a chocolate bar and it's for 50k and the other is very sleek and lovely and is for 50 & 100k. They're both made with the Nano colors. I'll post links to them here if anyone cares to take a look at them.



If you see them, like them, and want them in a different size, Nanomail me at Sakitu on the main site, or just comment on here and leave your Nano username so I can mail the re-sized one to you. Anywho, lots of ideas cranking around, none solid enough to write about but I'm working on that. Lots of little ones I like that could make for a very random story, but I'm a very random person so it would fit. 8D

-Sakitu

Jared

Okay, so I've been doing a show all summer--You're A Good Man Charlie Brown--out in the Valley so I've been getting rides out there everyday, basically, with Jared. Now, Jared and I have been good friends for a couple years. He's a singer in Camerata, directed Variety Show last year and will produce it this coming year, he'll be a senior, and he's just about the most amazing person you may ever meet. Not even exaggerating. He is so amazingly thoughtful and sensitive. He's an amazing singer and listens mostly to soundtracks of musicals. He raises birds, has his own little business with that, wants to be a music teacher. We have a lot in common, wanting to do many of the same things before settling down back here in the state we love. We also agree on many things and have the same train of thought most of the time. It's absolutely the most wonderful thing in the world. My best conversations have been with his on the way to or from rehearsal.

I am totally and completely in love with this man. Well not quite literally--like I really do like him a lot. I can see myself with him which has never happened with any other guy. There is no way I can get together with him, it would be pointless and would completely ruin what we have now. I'm off to college halfway cross the country in about 18 days and he's still going to be here in school. I wasn't sure how he felt about me--and I'm still really not, but our cast party was tonight and I was out with the rest of the younger people from the cast/crew having desert after and when I got home he sent me a text saying thanks for the great night and that he'd see me soon. I never get texts like that, not from his especially. I hardly ever get texts from him anyway. You have no idea how great that felt--well maybe but anyway--I sort of want to tell him that I really do like him but I don't want anything to happen just now and hopefully we can get together once he's out of college and get something going maybe. I'm just not even brave enough to do that--I don't want things to get awkward.

Anyway, I'm not looking for advice, I just wanted to get this out and see what people just thought about it. Maybe share some stories back and forth. So all ya'lls who may be here from Menagerie please comment, and anyone else who may happen across this I'd love to chat about stuff so drop a comment.

Expo Research Paper

So we've got this huge end of the year research paper to write in "Advanced Expository Writing" (Expo). It's got to end up being like 14 pages or something, I hardly write 3 page papers on average. I'm hoping I have enough to talk about on the aspect of epidemics/pandemics and human reaction to them. It should be really interesting. I've got 5 different books at the moment to look over about past epidemics. I just looked up the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic, and go figure a pandemic is worse. Doesn't sound it to me, but it is. Epidemic is like when something has more cases than you expect, but not a bunch bunch more. Pandemic refers to it affecting TONS of people and being more widespread than an epidemic. So this swine flu (H1N1, whatever) is a pandemic, not an epidemic at this point I believe. (Lawl, doesn't H1N1 just make you think Hinee, like butt. Someone pointed that out to me last week.)

So, I get to come up with an argumentative 14 page research paper. I can't pick out a thesis to save my life, let alone write one--and I failed the first quarter this semester, the first time I've ever failed a class, so I have to get everything in and good so I can average that out to something more reasonable. Oh, and not to mention I've got three other papers to do for this class--not having them done and missing drafts of things is why I failed. I'm so sick of writing papers it's not even funny. I'm totally fading, I mean come on, we've got like 19 more days left of school until graduation, and less than that for senior's last day. I'm feeling completely done with everything--Expo is my only class--really--that isn't a 'senior' class. It's got both seniors and juniors in it. (I've got two other all high-school classes, but PE and Chorus aren't academic, really...I can't quite do a fade out there when we aren't doing much to begin with.)

I just hope I can squeeze a good thesis out and find lots of good information to fill up at least 10 pages, preferably around 13-14....Oh and one of the mares up at Allenwood is due to have a foal very soon. Hopefully Sarah will remember to call me this time, and I can be there. My guess for day, time, gender, color is up on the board there--May 23rd, 2am-4am, Brown, Colt. I'm super excited, 'cause I missed Buck's birth about three years ago. I'm really hoping I can be around for this little one.

Chorus

So our teacher has been away at the All State Music Festival for the past two days and we've had a sub for our chorus class. Andrea, our teacher, made sure I knew what she was going to have us do in case the sub was confused. Well, we had a sub that refused to listen to the class and she just went on and almost completely ignored the sub plans. Our class is extremely confrontational. They refuse to do anything any sub says really, unless it's like Arthur--a retired music teacher we've had come in. This sub just got I'll deal with it, but I absolutely could not stand this woman. She was very rude to us--though our class was rude to her as well--as a whole. When we get back in class on Tuesday with Andrea, she's gonna be really pissed because we didn't really work on the music (the altos I think worked the most--at least we worked some, I don't know about the sopranos 'cause they were in another room) and our concert is in a few weeks, and we've only got like 6 rehearsals left before it and we hardly know one of the songs at all. I mean we can sing it, but it's complete crap.

Sakitu