I'm still doing things... sort of...

So I haven't posted in almost two months.  XP

I was going to post regularly during Nanowrimo, but I didn't.  I think part of that was because every time I thought that I ought to write in my blog, I told myself it would be more constructive to write on my story/story ideas.  Another reason was that I didn't do too hot during Nanowrimo and I think deep down I didn't want to broadcast my floundering efforts to the world.  Floundering is a good word... Like a Magikarp...  Sarah used Splash!  Sarah wrote 200 words.  Sarah fainted.

I meant to push on through December so that I could at least claim my word count goal as a prize, even if it was late.  But then we had this project of doom at work and I had to work overtime for about three weeks, and that killed me.  Those were dark days in which I was chained to my desk at work, a chain with links too thick to saw through with my nail-clipper file, while someone came by once a day with a shallow bowl full of slop so that I could keep up just enough strength to keep going.  I tried to send help to the outside world, but all I could do was write notes on post-it notes, fold them into paper airplanes, and then aim for the open door whenever someone came in or out.

Okay, just kidding.  There was no chain, the slop was actually Christmas cookies, and I complained a lot to several people, who listened and sympathized, so that was nice of them.

Soon after the project of doom was over, I had to get ready for Christmas, and Christmas break, and for the past week I've been doing some really awesome chillaxing.

I drew a for-real, honest-to-goodness pencil drawing, but I'm at my folks' right now and I don't have a scanner, so that will get plastered on three different websites once I get home, including this one.  I've had artist's block for months, so drawing again felt REALLY good.

And then there's my fanfiction.  I worked on it during nanowrimo and got up to the climax.  At that point, I was able to look back very clearly on what I had written and realized I had accomplished the most boring fanfiction ever to be fanfictioned.  The IDEA of the story I still like.  But the plotline was terrible.  I decided to set it aside for the time being and come back to it with fresh eyes.  In fact, in the last few days, I've been musing on it, and I've already come up with some alterations that improve things greatly.

Things on the horizon: 

• More drawings, hopefully.  
• Since I'm nearly starting from scratch on the fanfiction, it will be awhile before there's anything worth sharing.  
• I plan on doing some cosplay/prop tweaking before Nakakon in March.  
• All-in-all, though, it's a little hard to say.  I feel like the new year is a chance to make some resolutions and take care of some flaws/bad habits, so it's possible that I may not get much creative work done while I focus on some self-improvement.  Also, I got a nook for Christmas, so I may not get much creative work done because I'm reading.

So, yeah, that's what's up with me these days.

Peace out!

Writing... Stuff...

So, four days into Nanowrimo.  Let's see how I've done so far.

To reach the end-of-the-month goal, I have to average 1,667 words a day.

Day 1 - 2,301 words.  Excellent.
Day 2 - 1,457 words.  Decent.
Day 3 - 0 words.  This is why I can't have nice things.  Like the internet.  It's too distracting.
Day 4 - 999 words, but I intend to write more after this, so it should be higher by the end of the day.  I'll see if I can hit my 1,667 goal.  Then I'll only be a day behind.

I've found I have two major flaws working against me.  The first is procrastination, and the second is an attention span the length of a gold fish's.  I have a couple of plans that I think may prove helpful.  One, is to track down and download my trusty "Q10" program, which is a simplistic word processor that takes up the entire screen.  (You have to actually minimize it to even hit the Windows "Start" button.)  (If you're interested, just google it.  It's a free download.)  That might lower the temptation to pop into the internet while I write.  The other is to set a time limit for myself and set an alarm.  One of the temptations, when you're writing for a word count goal, is to check your word count every five minutes.  I think maybe if I measured my progress by time, and set alarm so I don't have to check the clock either, I might be able to work better.

I had an interesting experience while writing in which I introduced a new character, and then they ended up being different from how I pictured them.  I needed a bad guy for the hero to fight, and I ended up with this idea of a teenager.  He's a knife fighter, and moves really fast.  I was actually kind of picturing something parkour-ish, in the way he'd chase people down and kill them.  I imagined he'd be this really cocky guy, who tries to play it cool, and chasing down his prey would be kind of a fun game for him.  Then I started actually writing about him.  Was he a cool, cocky guy?  No.  This guy's creepy.  This kid is not right in the head.  He does enjoy chasing his prey, but in a really creepy, overly-predatorial kind of way, and he's not someone I would ever want to meet in a dark alley... which is pretty much what happened to the hero.

And then he went and got himself shot!  And I wasn't really expecting that!  And then I was like, "Oh no, creepy predator guy, what will happen to you?  Will you live?  I don't even know!  But, strangely, I kind of want you to live, so you probably will, even though I have no idea what I'll do with you for the rest of the story, because you were only supposed to be in this one scene."

(Oh my gosh, "creepy predator guy" sounds terrible!  You need a different nickname, Creepy Predator Guy Who Has Nothing To Do With Stalking Women.)

And, I guess I promised an excerpt or something.  So here's a little scene that was kind of amusing (to me anyway).  This is from Trigun fanfiction, but it's spoiler free, and you don't need to know anything about Trigun to read it.  The characters in question are Razlo, a character from the manga, and Chapel the Seer, who's my own.  If you know Trigun's Chapel the Evergreen, well, he and Seer are of the same stock.  In this story, Chapel is a title and has been passed down from Evergreen to Seer.  If you don't know Chapel the Evergreen, all you need to know is that Chapel the Seer is a priest and he's evil.  The name Seer comes from his ability (although somewhat limited) to read the minds of others.  In this scene, Razlo had stolen something from Seer and was captured soon afterward.  He's found himself tied to a chair and expects to be tortured.

Chapel the Seer walked in and closed the door behind him.

“Oh... It's just you.” Razlo said. Then he eyed Seer and asked, “Wait, are you the torture dude? I've heard you guys are running on a short staff. Maybe you're pulling double duty.”

Seer looked unamused. “I'm here to interrogate you, if that's what you mean.”

Razlo looked him over and then said, “I've never been interrogate by a priest before. Is this what making a confession is like?”

The unamused look grew stronger.

Razlo gave a cocky grin and said, “Forgive me father, for I have sinned!”

“You're not forgiven.” Seer answered flatly.

“Aw, come on, Chapel! I mean, Father! I'll pray my rosary beads and everything!”

“Honestly, I would be surprised if you even knew how to use rosary beads.”

“What? Give me a break! Everyone knows about rosary beads!”

With slight amusement, Seer said, “Alright then, tell me.”

“Uh... well... They're beads.”

“Yes,” Seer said slowly.

“And... uh... they're pink, like roses, and that's why their called rosary beads!”

Seer gave him a blank look. “Uh...huh...”

“And, you say a prayer for each bead on the string.”

“And that prayer is?” Seer prompted.

There was a silence following that question. Finally, Razlo offered, “Our Father, who art in heaven?”

Seer gave a look that showed he was waiting for more.

Razlo continued, “Hollow be thy name.”

“It's 'hallowed,' not 'hollow.'”

“That's what I said!” Razlo said quickly. “Uh... then it's... thy kingdom come, thy will be done... on earth and in heaven... Give us this day our daily bread... Forgive our trespasses as we forgive the trespasses of others...” Razlo paused. It stretched into a very long pause. Finally he decided to cut his losses. “Forever and ever, Amen!”

“That was horrendous.” Seer said. “Now what's the other prayer?”

“Uh... You just say that one over and over.”

“No, there are two prayers involved.”

Razlo concidered a moment. “Is it... a Hail Mary?”

“Yes. How does that one go?”

“Uh... Hail Mary... full of grace... blessed art thou of women... and blessed art the fruit of the loom.”

“It's 'fruit of thy womb,'” Seer interrupted. “You're praying about underwear.”

“I said 'womb!' I totally said 'womb!'” Razlo cried. “Hey, wait a second! I see what you're trying to pull here! I got you all figured out! You're trying to torture me by making me pray!”

Seer raised an eyebrow. “Is prayer torturous for you?”

“Yeah, obviously! Praying is boring sissy stuff!”

Seer sighed. “Alright, we'll get down to business, then. Tell me where the plant is, and I'll read your thoughts to find out myself.”

Razlo frowned at that sentence a moment before saying, “Don't you mean, 'tell me or I'll read your thoughts?'”

“No, I meant 'and.' I'll read your thoughts to see if you're lying or not.”

“What!? What the crap! Why even bother asking me to say it!?”

“I thought it made things a little more polite,” Seer answered.

“Man, this is bull! I'm never letting myself get tortured again! It totally sucks!”

There was a silence while the two eyed each other. Razlo guessed correctly that Seer was reading his mind, and he wanted to make sure his expression showed that he didn't appreciate it.  Then, slowly, Seer grew angry.

“You don't know where she is!” he cried.

“Nope! I passed her off to someone else!”

“Why didn't you say so!?”

“Because you were going to read my mind anyway, you idiot!”

Seer gave him a hateful look. Then he turned on his heal and left, slamming the door behind him.

Razlo relaxed in his chair and grinned. See? I told you I could handle being tortured.

Nanowrimo 2012

So, next month is Nanowrimo.  (That would be National Novel Writing Month, a challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November.)

In case you haven't noticed, my creative attention span has been jumping from one thing to another lately, and, as such, my writing projects and ideas are a bit too messy to participate in Nanowrimo properly.  But, I'd like to go for it nonetheless, but just a little differently.  I plan on aiming for 50,000 words of anything.  This could be random out-of-order scenes, original work, fan fiction, novel length stories, short stories, whatever I end up writing.  Just as long as I'm writing, no matter how random and ever-changing the subject matter is, I'll be happy.

I made very half-hearted attempts at this the last two years, and if there's anything I've learned, it's that in order to reach that word count goal, you can't do it half-heartedly.  To keep me from wussing out, I've struck a deal with a friend to be my support buddy, and, somehow, I also ended up joining a facebook group to boot.

I plan on using the blog during the month to post word counts, musings and excerpts while I write, which will either be cool or boring for you guys.  I'm not really sure which. XD

We start on Thursday... here goes nothing...

Short Story

Hey gang!

I'm gonna post a short story.  It's actually... *checks* 17 pages in a word processor, and almost 10,000 words, which I think is on the long end of a short story.  *checks that, too*  Wikipedia says a short story can be up to 20,000 words, so I'm good.  Not that it really matters.  I just wanted to warn you that you might set this aside for when you can read it in one sitting.

And, I should warn that it's a Trigun fanfiction, and that it's set AFTER the end of the anime, so there are SPOILERS.  Like totally.  We're spoilering it up in here.  So if you don't want spoilers, or you don't watch Trigun, I'm sorry.  :(  I'll have something not-Trigun next time.  (And this isn't, by the way, the fanfiction I mentioned before.  That one's long, and still not finished.)

I started this quite a while back and didn't finish it.  But with Halloween coming up, I was reminded of it, since it's a ghost story, and completed it.  Although, it's not scary.  In fact, it's meant to be kind of humorous, because silly Trigun is the best Trigun.  But, basically, the whole thing was more or less made up as I went along, for my own enjoyment, so I can't guarantee the quality.  But if it gets a chuckle out of you at any time, I'll consider it a success. 

This doesn't have a title, because I'm bad at titles.  I would probably name it something like, "Attack of the Ghost Who Was Actually Quite a Nice Ghost and Didn't Mean to Scare Meryl, So He's Very Sorry, But Not Sorry for Being a Pain in the Butt to Knives, Because Knives Deserves It."  Yep.  Award-winning title right there.

Okay, anyway, here's my gibberish.

Fanfiction and Heroes

So...
I'm supposed to be writing a mystery story, or drawing, or cross stitching, or something like that.

Instead, Trigun was like, "I OWN YOUR SOUL!"

I've been writing fanfiction. 

Oh, and, I might, maybe, kind of, might have started a tumblr... for Trigun.  Tumblr seems to be the only place that the fans are active at all (it is kind of an old show, after all), so I broke down and got an account in the name of fan interaction.  I won't bore you with the details of either venture, as it would only make me sound like the ridiculous fangirl that I am.

Writing fanfiction is kind of interesting, though.  For a long time, I always viewed it as cheating.  The characters, or the setting, or both, are already provided, so fanfiction was the "easy" way out.  I held nothing against those who wrote or read it, I just felt that if I was going to take the trouble to write something, I didn't want to "cheat."  I would, occassionally, write a little fanfiction myself, but it was always boredom writing and nothing that I took seriously.  Then I started coming up with fanfiction ideas that I thought were really pretty good.  They were good enough that I wanted to write them and do a good job.  I had to sit down and have a serious talk with myself about whether or not this was acceptable behavior.  I decided it was okay to have ideas, as long as I didn't take the ideas seriously enough to actually write them down.  Which is sort of like saying it's okay to keep a lit cigarette in your mouth as long as you don't inhale.  It's a ridiculous thing to say.  Last weekend I finally inhaled.

Geez, I feel like I'm confessing a terrible decline in morals!  It's only fanfiction!  It's not even the dirty kind!  The romance is heterosexual and G-rated, okay!?

But it feels weird to be writing something and thinking, "Is it okay that he said that?  Is that out of character?" and, "Wait, I think I need to double check that.  Which volume of the manga was that in?"

Once it's finished, I may post it online somewhere.  Don't know yet.

 ---

On a different note, I'm going to take a moment to write about something a bit cathartic.  It's been on my mind.

I wish when I was a kid, someone had told me that it was okay to pick fictional characters as your hero.

I always dreaded having to write about my hero in elementary school.  I didn't have one.  There was no single person that I idolized in any way.  I would make something up about my mom or dad being my hero.  I do love both of them, but I didn't idolize them.  I was jealous of the kids who could write things like, "I love basketball, so Micheal Jordan is my hero," or "My uncle is in the army, so he's my hero."  Maybe I've just lived a life that's too boring and sheltered to be attached to anyone cool enough to be my hero.  It didn't even occur to me that I was allowed to write "The Animorphs," or anything like that.  Real people listed real people as their hero.  Only the total dweebs ran around saying they wanted to be batman when they grew up.

Once I got into high school, though, I started doing this thing, occasionally, where I would try channeling a fictional character in order to get a confidence boost.  I remember walking through the high school and thinking about Aragorn from Lord of the Rings.  I would remember that he was called "Strider" because he was long-legged and took long steps.  I would lengthen my stride just a little, walking down the halls of the high school.  That was enough to give me a little boost.  There was one day, while I was working summers during college, when I was having a bad day at work.  I started pretending to myself that I was a Time Lord  (um, Time Lady?) who was just pretending to be a normal human.  Working at a retail store was just part of the guise.  I didn't even bother explaining to myself why I needed to pretend to be a human.  I was a Time Lord.  That was all that mattered.  And one of the reasons I'm so infatuated with Trigun is because some of the characters were the right thing at the right time for me.  That's a really long story, but I've definitely channeled Trigun before.

I recently read about a study which had some surprising results on how fictional characters effect self esteem.  You can read it here, but I'll summarize for you.  Some people wanted to know if men's self esteem was hurt by seeing buff guys in pop culture, similar to the way women's self esteem can be hurt by seeing skinny women on TV.  They showed pictures of comic book super heroes to college age men, and then asked them to rate their happiness, give their view of their body, and take a small strength test.  Guys who had an emotional attachment to the characters they were shown, outranked the rest in all three categories.  So, thinking about a fictional character that you love boosts your self confidence and can even make your physically stronger.

How awesome is that?

I admit, the results might be just the same if a person were shown a picture of a real life person that they looked up to, but that doesn't really matter.  What matters is that the dweeby kid running around saying he wants to be Batman when he grows up is doing himself just as much good as someone with a real person that they look up to, and probably more good than I did for myself, resigning myself to a hero-less childhood.

So if I were asked as an adult to write about someone who was my hero, I would probably end up writing about someone like Doctor Who.  And I would be totally okay with that.

Peace Out, gang!

Cross Stitching

I've been cross stitching for the past week or so.  Unfortunately, I'm only about a quarter of the way done with it, and I'm restless.  I knew it would be time consuming, but I underestimated just how time consuming it would be.  Or perhaps I overestimated my attention span.  I plan on keeping what I have in case I decide to come back to it later, but for now, I think I'm going to set it aside.

Here's the story, though.

I never would have considered cross stitching, since, to me anyway, it holds the stereotype of being an activity that is only done my one of two types of people: old ladies, and Victorian ladies.  Since I am neither, it wasn't an option.

But one day I stumbled on a little crafting niche of cross stitching geeky stuff, like these:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22085563@N06/

http://miloceane.deviantart.com/art/Cross-stitch-Yellow-s-Pikachu-275035689

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stopsign/3282603064/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/krupptastic/3487964783/in/set-72157614432044697/

I thought, "Hey!  That's cool!  Maybe if I'm cross stitching something that I really like, it could be fun."  I decided to give it a try.  After much pondering, I decided to cross stitch the four elemental symbols from the series "Avatar: The Last Airbender."  This was good because a) I'm in love with that show, and b) I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy cross stitching, so I could start with just one symbol, and if I liked it, I could do the rest.

I started with the air symbol.  I've a fondness for air out of the elements of the show, because air benders are pacifists and avoid direct conflict, and that's me in a nutshell.

Since airbenders wear orange, I grabbed orange thread for a background (and that left blue reserved for water, if I got that far).  The thread changes colors down it's length from orange to yellow and back, so I thought that would look cool.  For the symbol and a border, I grabbed a very dark brown, rather than black.  I don't like using straight black much in art.  I feel like true black is somehow sort of lifeless.  I'll frequently mix it with brown or dark blue to make it either a "warm" black or a "cool" black, and that feels more comfortable in an image to me.

Anywho, I had to make my own pattern, which was a bit of a task, and involved graph paper and drawing, erasing, and redrawing little X's over and over again until I was satisfied.

This is how far I got in a week.  It's about a quarter of the background, and you can see where I intend to put in the spirals when the background is complete.

(This is about three inches across, or about thirty stitches.)

I've learned a lot from this past week.  I learned about cross stitch fabrics, and how to secure the end of your thread without trying a knot.  I learned different ways of making your own cross stitch pattern, and that cross stitch thread comes in more colors than Skittles.  And I learned that cross stitching isn't really my thing, and that's okay.

I consider myself always in a bit of flux.  I'm always learning new things about myself, and about what I like and what I don't like, and how I feel about different things.  I tend to roam from one type of art or craft to another, and sometimes I think it would be better if I just picked one thing and stuck to it.  But then I would stop learning about myself.

Here's to hoping that someday I will actually finish this.

Peace out, guys!

Random Stuff

Okay, I'm gonna be honest right up front.  I got nothing this week.  So I'm going to just ramble about random stuff, and hopefully it will all be art/writing related.  Maybe you'll find it interesting.  Maybe.

That story I'm working on:
I thought it would be cool to write a mystery, because I've never done that before and I've always sort of wanted to.  And then I thought it would be cool to set it in Victorian England, because everybody likes Victorian mysteries, right?

So I've been swinging wildly back and forth between, "This story is going to be cool!  I'm gonna rock the mystery genre, baby!" and "WHY DID I THINK THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA!?"  I don't know much about the Victorian era, and I don't know how the British police force works. (Are all detectives plain-clothes detectives?  What rank do you need to be to work on a murder mystery?  Do detectives have secretaries?  Did women even work as secretaries in the Victorian era?)  I've bought a book on the Victorian Era, by the way, which is helpful, and, honestly, pretty interesting and I'm enjoying reading it.  It seems like whenever I learn something new about that time period I experience a mix of pride on their behalf, and horror.  That was the era pain killer started being widely used for surgeries and childbirth and stuff.  Yay!  That's so great!  But they didn't seem to know what exactly made for good medicine, because you could buy over-the-counter opium... for children's ear aches.

And, getting back on the topic of writing, if you know the answer to the mystery, then all the clues seem obvious to you, so how do you know which of the clues you're writing into the story are obvious and which ones aren't?

I just need to keep reminding myself that few people will ever read this story.  I mean, I don't intend to try and get it published.  I'm just doing it for fun and for the challenge.  So if I totally crash and burn, that's okay.  Right?  Right.

On the subject of favorite characters:
I'm just throwing this out here, because I think maybe I'm weird about this.  It's really common for me to have two favorite characters in a story: one that I really enjoyed all through the story, usually someone funny or lovable; and one that elicited the greatest emotional response out of me.  So when I try to figure out who my favorite character is, I can never make up my mind.  Do I pick the one who made me smile all the way through, or do I pick the one who made me cry in the end?  They're both my favorite.  You can do that, right?  Have two favorites?

For example, in "Avatar: The Last Airbender,"  Sokka... (do I really want to admit this?) Sokka and I have the same sense of humor.  (And now that I've started in on Korra, he's the character I miss the most.)  But Zuko, of course, was the one who pulled my heartstrings.  And in "Trigun," Vash is awesome in a plethora of ways, but Wolfwood hasn't so much pulled my heartstrings as gotten all tangled up in them so that he almost can't move without getting an emotional response out of me.

So now you know.  I frequently have two favorites per story.

On the subject of critiquing stories:
I'm not quite sure how it happened, but somewhere along the way, I've gotten into the habit of analyzing the stories that I read and watch.  What did I like?  Why did I feel like that part was well done?  What didn't I like?  Why was that part "wrong?"  How could it have been done better?  I'm sure this has something to do with me writing stories myself.  Sometimes I think it's a good thing, because it will make me a better writer, but sometimes I think I'm being awfully arrogant, telling the professionals what they did wrong and how they should have done it.

It's kind of a two edged-sword, because some things, when you start analyzing and critiquing them, only come out more impressive.  The more you pick them apart, the more you see how well written they are.  (Avatar:TLA, I'm lookin' at you!  You are a heck of a well written story!  I applaud you!)  On the other hand, if I find too many flaws, it'll kill the story.  There's a sad sad tale in my life about how I found too many things I didn't like in the Trigun movie, and now I can't hardly think about it without thinking about all the ways I want to "fix" it.

Completely random:
On Sat. Sept. 15, there's going to be a real-life Pro Bending tournament at Lake Hefner.  Anyone can enter, as a team of three or individually.  Individuals will be divided into teams at the event.  Fire is replaced with nerf balls, earth discs are replaced with frisbees, and water is coming in the form of water balloons.  I'm already signed up to be an earth bender with my sister and a friend.  If anyone's interested, you can find more info, or sign up here: https://www.facebook.com/events/304327766332887/  Or you can just show up.  I'm sure they won't turn you away.

Okay, done rambling.  Peace out!